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THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



STUDIES IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 

With Appendix on Christian Unity in America 
and the Historic Episcopate 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 

With a critical review of Lux Mundi and Dr. 
Martineau's Seat of Authority in Religion 

THE ETHICS OF HEGEL 

Translated Selections from his Rechtsphilosophie with 
an introductory exposition 



THE 

FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 



ESSAYS IN APOLOGETICS 



.y BY 

j! macbride sterrett, d. d. 

The Head Professor of Philosophy in 
The George Washington University 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

jf.U rights reserved 



UBRAftY of OOWGftESS 
Two Copies rtecciveu 

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COPY b/ I 



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1^1 



2D €otit b)|)o art t|)e 8ut|)or of {leace anH lober of 
concorUt in bnotulelige of lD|)om jstanHetl) our eternal 
life, to|)O0e jserbfce iiei perfect freeHomj a!)efenli U0 t|)p 
|)umble j3erbant!3 in all aisisaultjs of our enemiejs; t|)at 
toe, jsurefe trujstinu vx t|)p liefence, map not fear t|)e 
])olt)er of an? aUberjsariejss, t|)rou(s|) t|)e vcCx^X of Sf^isu? 
C|)riieit our Itorti^ 3men« ^ 



' Really every genuine law is a liberty : it contains 
a reasonable principle of objective mind ; in other 
words it embodies a liberty." ^ 

* Collect from Prayer Book. 

^ Hegel's Philosopkie des Geistes, S 530. 



Copyright, igog 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published April, igog 



The Mason Press 
Syracuse, New York 



PREFACE 

These current discussions of contemporary themes and 
thinkers are Essays in Apologetics. Apologetics is the philo- 
sophical defense or justification of Religion. It aims at vin- 
dicating the concrete rationality of the religious side of hu- 
manity's life. It attempts a critical refutation of all antagonis- 
tic world-views. It meets them in the open, on purely intellec- 
tual grounds, as to what is the most rational world-view — one 
that excludes and invalidates religion, or one that includes and 
validates it. 

The volume is a series of Studies, rather than a sustained 
thesis. Yet there runs through them all, the contention that 
nature and man are known truly, only when they are viewed as 
a process of objective Mind, realizing itself afresh in and 
through empirical conditions. 

Its fundamental object is to maintain the reasonableness of 
a man of modern culture frankly and earnestly worshiping" in 
some form of '^authoritative religion'' — in any form, rather than 
in no form. 

Hence the persistent polemic against the "mechanical view" 
of the universe. This merely mechanical interpretation of Na- 
ture and man and his institutions is a metaphysical perversion of 
the mechanical theory, properly used in Science. It is not Sci- 
ence, but the bad metaphysics of some men of Science. It is the 
metaphysics of Naturalism and of rigid mechanical determinism, 
in which there can be no worthy place for the humanities. 
These Essays seek a world-view in which Art and Religion and 
Philosophy are seen to have valid functions for human weal. 
The merely Scientific man, the man whose world-view is merely 

V 



vi PREFACE 

that of mechanical Science — the undevout astronomer, or 
geologist, — is mad. Only the devout man is fully sane. 

The use of the dialectic method will be noted. First state- 
ments, though put dogmatically, are not final ones. Criticism 
follows to show their patent limitations, and thus force them 
into more concrete forms. 

The book may be too semi-technical for popular readers, and 
too semi-popular for technical readers. The odium Theolo- 
gicum may sometimes seem to swamp the philosophic calm, in 
the author's interest in such verities as God, Freedom and Im- 
mortality. The mixture of metaphor with the dialect of philoso- 
phy, and the appeal to men's moral and religious needs, as 
against the regnant naturalism of a metaphysical Science, may 
be faulted. And yet we dare believe that there is a bit of real 
logic throughout the volume. 

Certain truths having become axioms in philosophy like 
certain principles in mathematics, constantly applied, repeti- 
tions of these axiomatic realities had necessarily to be made 
throughout the book without adducing constant cross refer- 
ences. 

The larger part of the book was written aus einem Gusse, in 
a heat, almost at a sitting, and must suffer for the faults of all 
such composition. 

At least the author can say, liberavi animam meant on some 
vital topics of the time. He sends the volume forth with the 
hope that it may help liberate some fellow-men from bondage 
to a godless world-view, and lead some others from the capri- 
ciousness of individualism, into that objective service of God, 
which is perfect freedom. 

He has to thank his colleague. Professor Hermann Schon- 
feld for his valuable assistance in reading and correcting the 
final proof of the whole volume. 

J. Macbride Sterrett. 
The George Washington University, 

Washington, D, C, January, igos. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
The Freedom of Authority i 

CHAPTER H 
Sabatier, Harnack and Loisy 45 

CHAPTER HI 
Abbe Loisy 107 

CHAPTER IV 

The Historical Method 157 

(a) Scientific. 
{d) Philosophical. 

CHAPTER V 
Ecclesiastical Impedimenta 218 

CHAPTER VI 
Ethics of Creed Conformity 234 

CHAPTER VII 

The Ground of Certitude in Religion 

Reason and Authority in Religion 240 

Psychological Forms of Religion 264 

CHAPTER VIII 

Ultimate Ground of Authority 289 

Appendix — Notes 303 

vii 



CHAPTER I 

THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

"Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist." This 
dictum of Emerson in his Sturm und Drang period cannot be 
taken seriously. Taken literally in England, it would mean the 
exclusion of King, Archbishops, the clergy and the laity of the 
Church of England from the category of manhood. Taken 
seriously anywheres, it would mean the denial of manhood to 
all men of good manners. The good-mannered man is the one 
who conforms to the manners, or morals (mores, rjOiKa^ 
Sitten) of his tribe, set, community, station and institutions. 

It would mean that one must decivilize, desocialize himself 
— fanatically attempt not to be like other men. My set, people, 
church believe and behave so and so. I must behave unlike 
them and thus finally ostracise myself from all relations to my 
fellow men in order to be a man. My good fellow citizens obey 
the laws, I must be an anti-nomian. My church believes in the 
Apostles' Creed and has a prescribed form of worship. I must 
deny the creed and decry the cult. I must be a veritable Ish- 
maelite and heed "the call of the wild" against "the call of the 
tame." 

But what quality of manhood remains in one as a non- 
conformist? "No tribe, nor state, nor home hath he." Self- 
schismed from all of his kind by his un-kindness; unformed by 
all his non-conformity, he must be as Aristotle said, "either a 
beast or a god." He would be even less than a beast. For 
beasts are like their kind, conform to their type, physically and. 

I I "^ 



2 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

psychically. ^'Insist on yourself, never imitate," says Emer- 
son again in his essay on Self-reliance. And again, ''I hope in 
these days we have heard the last of conformity and consist- 
ency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous hencefor- 
ward." Emerson must have meant that the perfect man should 
be a non-conformist to the manners of imperfect men. A Jesus 
must not conform to the creeds and deeds of the Pharisees and 
Sadducees — hypocrites. This is evident from the transcen- 
dental lines prefixed to a previous essay : — 

** I am the owner of the spheres, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakspere's strain." 

Such a cosmopolitan man is more like a god. Such an un- 
common man may stand, as he further says, before every cus- 
tom and law and say: ''Under this mask did my Proteus 
nature hide itself." I am the universal-human. Nihil humani 
alienum a me puto and so I am a man because I am a conform- 
ist. I can only be a non-conformist to imperfect forms, because 
I have been conformed to those of the universal-human. I, as a 
cosmopolitan, may slight provincial customs. But I have be- 
come a cosmopolite by being a conformist to the manners of 
all provinces. I can be a non-conformist only after and because 
I have become a conformed-ist. I have, Emerson virtually 
says, conformed to the type of perfect manhood and therefore 
I can non-conform to imperfect forms of the type. ''The 
oversoul" is my soul. In me is a greater than me, that is, my 
real me. It is God that is my real self, and God cannot be con- 
formed to anything but Himself. Thus Emerson's non-con- 
formist turns out to be a god, rather than a beast. What he 
means, if anything more than a striking expression is intended, 
is that the man who has become a real man by conformity to the 
perfect law of the universal-human, must non-conform to the 
manners, customs, morals of the imperfect human. In other 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 3 

words he meant to say that : Whoso would be a man must be 
a conformist/ 

So says biology in its law of conformity to type. So says 
psychology, pedagogy, morality, religion and philosophy. So, 
too, says history. No form of organized society — from the 
tribal to the republican, from the lowest to the highest form of 
social, moral or religious society has any place for the mug- 
wump, or non-conformist. Ostracism is always the penalty. 
The non-conformist is always at most a re-formist. He can be 
a non-conformist only because he has been transformed to some 
other form. Non-conformity is thus often the highest type of 
moral and religious conformity. The non-conformists of Eng- 
land have had their moral nobility only by virtue of their con- 
formity to a higher type of Christianity than that which they 
found about them. 

It was the moral and religious imperfection of the Church 
of England that made their non-conformity possible because of 
their conformity to higher religious ideals. Yes, it is often 
true that to be a man — a typical man — one must often be a 
non-conformist to the customs of degenerates. Degenerates 
means, in fact, those who have lost the qualities proper to the 
genus or kind of mankind. 

Isolate the child of cultured parents from all human inter- 
course. Let him be a private, subjective, uneducated potential 
man. You cannot take away from him the heredity that enters 
into his idiosyncrasy. But he is as nearly as possible unspoilt 
by the tyrants of domestic, religious, intellectual and moral 
authorities. No mother-tongue tyrannizes his speech — if 
speech he have. He is a private individual so far as that is 
possible. Let him then be cast into the desert, away from the 
shackles of civilization. Let him be nurtured by a wolf. An- 
thropomorphize his animal companions as much as Kipling or 

^Thus Emerson in speaking of the true scholar says, "the truth is this : 
Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of 
him." 



4 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Seton Thompson do. Let him be a Mogli. Still, ''persistence 
of type'' will keep him enough conformed to the human, to pre- 
vent his becoming wholly a beast, while his conformity to his 
bestial environment will keep him from becoming much of a 
man. 

By patent analysis every avowed non-conformist can be 
shown to be nine-teriths a conformedist. Heredity and envi- 
ronment have done their ineffaceable work upon him. He is 
full of prejudices — pre-judgments of ancestors and fellowmen. 

An unprejudiced judgment is a psychological impossibility. 
It is only important that one's pre-judgments be good and true, 
normal and objective, rather than whimsical, peculiar, abnormal 
and subjective. 

But if his judgments are so largely pre-judgments, pre- 
judices imbibed from ancestry and his social, ethical environ- 
ments, where is his distinctively private judgment? Where 
is what is termed his individuality? 

Analysis shows this to be largely an idiosyncrasy, a peculiar 
blending of hereditary and environing traits. He never was an 
individual in the abstract sense, i, e., as being abstracted from 
all such determining elements. He was not so when first ab- 
stracted from his mother's womb. Then the mother's love and 
the family ethos bathed and permeated, and together with the 
ethos of society, church and school made him a man among 
men. Hence his private judgment is always based upon ob- 
jective, social judgments. Otherwise the right of private 
judgment becomes the wrong of misjudgment to society, which 
punishes him accordingly, and a wrong to his own human 
nature which is self -retributive. In all this, too, he had been 
and still is under authority. Conformity and authority are cor- 
relatives. 

And here we have another bug-bear term — authority. The 
freedom of authority Is an antinomy, and an unresolved antin- 
omy is an insult to reason. The human spirit will not brook 
it. Where it cannot solve the antinomy by rising to a higher 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 5 

point of view, it will make a practical solution — will cut the 
Gordian knot. 

To speak of the freedom of authority may seem to some like 
discoursing on the whiteness of blackness. Kant's statement of 
some antinomies is classical. He denied the possibility of any 
rational solution of them. His critical solution of them left us 
with the unresolved dualism between phenomena and noumena. 
Later philosophy multiplies the antinomies — finds that in every 
object or idea there is difference as well as identity. All that is 
needed to make an antinomy is to emphasize the difference and 
neglect the identity. To solve, it is to see the unity in and 
through the difference, as is done in Burns' line ^'A man's a man 
for a' that." To make a bug-bear of authority, as fatal to free- 
dom, seems like a belated survival of a worked-out and thought- 
out antinomy. The scientific, historical and philosophical spirit 
and methods are all beyond the abstractions on which this 
antinomy is founded. And yet it lingers on jn robust form — an 
encysted, but lively corpse in the cosmic thought of the 
twentieth century. In no spheres of life is this survival more 
pronounced in our day than in those of morals and religion. 
Napoleon remarked to Laplace that he could not find any men- 
tion of the Creator in his Mechanique Celeste. ''Sire," said 
Laplace, "I had no need of any such hypothesis." So say some 
of authority in morals and religion — ''Sirs, there is no need of 
that hypothesis in describing true religion." 

The author of one of the most significant and brilliant works 
on religion^ quotes approvingly the tempestuous claim of Vinet, 
whom he styles the great prophet of the religion of the spirit in 
our age and country: "That which I absolutely repudiate is 
authority," and adds, "the time has come, it seems to me, for 
those who have broken with authority in their inner life, to break 
definitely with it In their theology." 

But we are told that the right of private judgment was the 

^Auguste Sabatier, Religions of Authority and the Religion of the 
Spirit, p. 283. 



6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

essential characteristic of the Reformation, and that this meant 
the repudiation of all authority in religion. It need scarcely be 
said that this has not been true of Protestantism, except in that 
of some who have departed far from its substantial principles 
and historical forms. Such writers demand a suspense of judg- 
ment in religious matters till they can be approached simply as 
an unbiased intellectual study. To do this they should be kept 
from all authoritative religious education, as John Stuart Mill 
was by his father. 

Authority may be defined as the power or influence through 
which one does or believes what he would not of his own 
unaided powers. Authorities are all presumably rightful. 
That lies in the very significance of the term. It is a personal 
relation between the wiser and better and those less wise and 
good. Society's judgment as to who are the wisest and best is 
expressed in the form of laws. Laws are authorized. The 
personal is never wholly absent from any form of authority. 
Its function is to enable individuals to attain a higher develop- 
ment than they could by their own unaided powers. This 
mediation is primarily through the collective reason and beliefs 
and customs of mankind and the individuals. Ultimately all 
authority must be seen to be invested in God, 'Vhose service 
is perfect freedom." Speaking of it mediately, it is the power 
or influence conferred by wisdom, character, office and station. 
Its fundamental idea is that of law. Law is a rule of conduct 
to an end. That end is always the well being of those upon 
whom it is imposed. Primarily objective, its aim is to make 
itself subjective in its subjects, so that it may be seen to be their 
own law — the law of their own nature. But it becomes to one a 
law of his own nature through custom and conformity — the 
law of his educated nature — his nature converted into sub- 
stantial manhood through conformity to the authorities which 
surround him from the cradle to the grave. Thus authority is 
the right of the species man over its individuals; and con- 
formity Is a duty of the individual to his set. It is this con- 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 7 

formity that makes him a generic man. And thus it becomes 
his right, his good, the means of his being elevated to the grade 
of manhood. 

Authority has its roots in the organic conditions of all forms 
of life and of good living. It is the pedagogue to whom all 
must always go to school. It is a necessary function of the 
species for its ow^n preservation. As tradition, it is the bond 
of generations transmitting the accumulated heritage of the 
ages. Every form of society naturally and necessarily begets 
generic traditions, customs, beliefs, constitutions and by-laws 
which are authoritative for all its members. The society 
which is without them cannot remain a society. That which 
has no such organic past can have no continuing present. 
''Institutions," it has been said, ''are the lengthening shadow 
of man." That is too feeble a simile. Say, rather, institutions 
are the lengthening and strengthening of the stature of man. 
Civilized men are civilized men only through institutions. Man 
is by nature — that is, by his educated nature — an institutional 
being, or as Aristotle said, "a political animal." And generic 
constitutions always imply authority, conformity and, through 
these, real concrete freedom or self-realization. Law, authority 
is fundamental and final and freedom is in and by means of law. 

But authority for man is always ultimately personal, and its 
aim is to enrich individuals by fulfilling them. Being personal 
it implies trust, confidence and obedience. Its function is its 
sufficient credential. It educates and sustains individuals. The 
individual cannot become a man except by conformity, as "the 
branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine" as a mem- 
ber. So we return to conformity as the necessary means of 
self-development. Authorities may sometimes seem external 
and obedience forced, but all education goes on under these 
principles. "One is always somebody's child." The man not 
less than the child and the race not less than man is always 
under authorities, which can be traced to the One Supreme 
personal authority "whose service is perfect freedom." Educa- 



8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

tion IS the influencing of person by person, to the end of the 
self-reaHzation of the one influenced. It is the shaping of the 
individual to his civiHzed environment, so that rational habits 
and views — ^that is, the views and habits of his institutions, may 
take the place of mere caprice. It is erroneous to say that 
"education is the development of the theoretical and practical 
in the individual,'' as if it were only an educing of what is 
already within, like shelling so many peas from a pod. Educa- 
tion is not merely an exegesis. It is rather an induction — a con- 
veying a fullness into an emptiness. It is a conversion, a regen- 
eration of the merely natural man of babyhood. Apart from 
heredity and idiosyncrasy, if there is anything peculiar, it is bad 
tin-kind, and needs extirpation rather than edtication, for the 
good of the individual and society. The child, as Hegel says, 
''as a potential man is only subjective or negative." His first 
nature must be converted into a second rational ethical nature, 
so that these become his second and true nature. Pedagogy is 
the art of making man ethical. It seeks to permeate him with 
the ethos, intellectual, moral and religious of his people. To a 
father seeking the best way to bring up his son, a Pythagorean, 
or some other philosopher, replied, ''make him a citizen of a 
state which has good laws." And by the state, Aristotle and 
Hegel mean the whole social organism — family, school, church, 
society, as well as government. Let him conform to these in- 
stitutional authorities if he would become a good and wise man. 
Let him conform his vocalization' to the common language; his 
reasoning to the common laws of thought ; his knowledge to the 
common fund of science, art, literature and philosophy ; his de- 
votional exercises to the common cult of his church, and his 
conduct to the ethical codes, customs and manners of his 
people, that he may attain to the stature of manhood. 

The imperishable Greek ideal of education was not merely 
that of drawing out but also that of a putting in. And it was 
to be put in by line upon line and precept upon precept and 
example upon example, and custom upon custom — that is, as 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 9 

Aristotle taught, by habituation to the objective, generic, and 
concrete wisdom and morals of the institution. During the 
process there is thus a species of self-enstrangement for the 
natural — the uneducated man, but its end is self-realization or 
the cultured moral man. All knowledge, all manners are for- 
eign to the child. But familiarity with them removes their for- 
eign air, and they become flesh of his flesh and spirit of his spirit 
— a second, regenerated nature. And as the process never 
ceases but with senility or death, one's regeneration is never 
quite completed. Literal school days do not end the conformity 
that educates. ''One is always somebody's child." The wis- 
dom and experience of his fellowmen and of the institutions of 
which he is a member are always objective concrete authorities. 
Without me there is always a greater than me, unless I have 
with Emerson become the owner of ''Lord Christ's heart and 
Shakespere's strain," and the "over soul" has become my own 
soul. Not till then will the right of the distinctively, peculiar 
private judgment be aught but mis- judgment. And in the 
process one's judgment is of worth only so far as it conforms to 
public universal judgment, intellectual or moral. And when it 
is right and good, it is so in virtue of its not being one's private 
judgment. The Lehrjahre always run through the Wander- 
jahre and even the Meisterjahre are years of Lehrjahre, Edu- 
cation is unending for the living man and it is always under 
authorities. 

But what place, we ask again, is left for freedom and 
individuality? Let us say briefly, and then try to see later on 
that in this process of education, freedom and individuality are 
being truly realized. 

We note the strange tendency of man to think in transcended 
forms of thought — ^to stand on overcome-standpoints. Men 
grow zealous and fight for old gods when they have thought 
themselves to new and higher ones. It is a species of intel- 
lectual and moral atavism. It is a recrudescence of the old 
Adam, which is often too strong for the new Adam in us, — ^to 



10 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

put it in religious way. Men of science who hold the strictly 
mechanical view of the universe, will often argue in terms of 
tetology and freedom. Or having passed beyond crude mate- 
rialism to the higher category of force as a system of forces, they 
will argue from the standpoint of matter as the ultimately real. 
Or having accepted evolution, they will argue as if there were 
no teleology. Life is still a higher category and yet they will 
often subordinate life to conceptions of the inorganic. Illustra- 
tions in morals and religion also are abundant. Men, like the 
Jews of old, believe in and fear Jehovah and yet worship their 
old idols. In religion, the Methodists call it back-sliding. In 
thought and action it is inconsistency. 

There is a whole nestful of eighteenth century conceptions 
— conceptions of the Eclaircissement, Aufkldrung or rational- 
ism, that have lived and fought through the nineteenth century, 
in spite of the accepted, historical method and the regnant con- 
ception of evolution. These are the abstract conceptions of 
reason, freedom, individuality and a generally static view of 
all things as separate and distinct, the universe being a collection 
of independent beings and things with no essential relations 
between them. In all human organizations the individual is 
the real. And the individual is an independent atom, impervious 
to foreign emigrations, a substantial unit, a microcosmic 
monad. These monads, as Leibnitz said, ''have no windows 
through which anything might go in or out of them." No 
sponging is therefore possible or desirable. Each one being like 
a separate world, is ''sufficient for itself, independent of every 
other creature, enveloping the infinite, expressing the universe 
and as durable, self-subsistent and absolute as the universe 
itself." This pluralistic view of the universe as a collection of 
many eternal and independent beings has its revival in the views 
of Professor James, Professor Howlson, Professor Schiller and 
the authors of the volume of essays entitled "Personal Ideal- 
ism." This eighteenth century view was practically a revival of 
nominalism against a second growth of realism in thought and 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY ii 

institution. It was the principle of criticism used against all 
constituted authorities. The illuminated, enfranchised indi- 
vidual was in duty bound to summon before his private tribunal 
for evaluation all the accepted creeds, cults and institutions. 
The German name for this age is the Aiifkldnmg — the clearing 
up, which Schelling happily characterized as an Auskldrung — a 
clearing ont} 

Ciii bono it asked of church and state and art and religion 
and every form of social organization. Does it, judged by the 
private reason of the private person, pay to belong to, to submit 
to any of these so called authorities? If not, then away with 
them from my universe. All organic unities — family, state, 
church, were looked upon as unities only in the sense of being 
collections or aggregations of independent individuals, formed 
by social contact for the enlarged happiness of the individual 
members. Never was there an age which was so sure that it 
had reached the ultimate point of view. The ofttim.es arrogancy 
of the modern scientific view of the world pales before that of the 
Illumination. Reason was late born, but it had finally been 
born, full-fledged in their day and would henceforth rule the 
world. After us the deluge, was the cry. Each man was to be 
his own Moses and his own Christ. The Sinai was within and 
the Golgotha too, so far as any need of a cross was recognized. 
''Thus would / speak, if I were Christ," are the words that 
Goethe put into the mouths of one of these rationalists, in char- 
acterizing the arrogant self-conceit of this phase of thought. 

Thus measured, all institutions of civilized life were found 
wanting, and so Rousseau made his "call to the wild" from the 
call of the tame — "Back from civilization and artificiality to na- 
ture and the freedom of the woodland." In a word it was the 
assertion of the infinitude of the finite self — ^the deification of the 
individual as in modern pluralism. Some of the representatives 
of the modern form of this individualistic polytheism seem to be 
jealous of God — would fain banish Him, or reduce Him to being 
^ Cf. my Ethics of Hegek P- 20, for further characterization. 



12 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

at most primus inter pares, lest He should tamper with the 
sacred rights of individuals. These are, by nature, as eternal 
and independent as God Himself. All are gods. 

In the eighteenth century form, freedom from all forms of 
social and institutional authorities was proclaimed. The evils 
of man were held to be due to society. The individual could 
only reach perfection by being freed from all restraint and al- 
lowed to follow his own natural instincts. All relations between 
individuals were looked upon as artificial, made by compact, and 
in no way constitutive of them. Hence dissent became the rule 
and conformity the exception. 

It may be well, at this point, to differentiate the principles of 
this "Age of Reason" from those of Protestantism, inasmuch as 
many falsely identify them. It is possible indeed for Sabatier 
to style himself a Protestant,^ after he has given much space to 
show that historically Protestantism, at least up till his day and 
to a few choice liberal souls, has always had its authoritative 
standards for its individual members. Indeed in his second 
work,^ he classifies Protestantism along with Romanism under 
"Religions of Authority" and gives a most drastic criticism of 
historical Protestantism which is only equalled by that of Dr. 
Martineau.^ Both of these writers err in holding that Protes- 
tants placed authority in a paper-pope, as the Bible has been 
stigmatized, and not recognizing too, that, historically, Protes- 
tants have also placed authority in their churches. They have 
all, always and everywheres, held to the Apostles' Creed, with its 
article, "I believe in the holy Catholic Church." 

But for the point at issue — the right of the private judgment 
of the individual. Protestants have always claimed the right of 
personal conviction, but also that the right of private judgment 
is the right of judgment based upon the Scriptures and creeds 
of the church — upon the testimony of the Spirit as authorita- 

^ Sabatier's Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion ^ p. 222. 

^ Sabatier's Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit. 

^ Martineau's Seat of Authority in Religion, 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 13 

tively communicated to the individual, not by a paper-pope, but 
by holy and inspired men and writers and most fully by the per- 
sonal Christ. Throughout, too, they had the conception of a 
kingdom of whose principles these persons were the authorita- 
tive exponents. Historically — that is — as a matter of fact, the 
fundamental doctrines of Protestants have been : 

( 1 ) The will of God revealed through the divine institutions 
and inspired men of holy Scriptures, as the authoritative rule of 
faith and practice. 

(2) Justification by faith alone, through the divine grace, 
mediated by the Holy Scriptures and the Christian community. 

(3) The universal priesthood of believers. 
Protestanism never contended for, nor allowed the right of 

mere private judgment in any of its churches. It has insisted 
upon personal conviction. It has asserted the supreme value — 
not of the individual, but of the Christlike person. It has always 
condemned to final punishment, in terms lurid or gentle, sensu- 
ous or spiritual, according to the prevailing culture of the times 
— all individuals whose private judgment and life were not in ac- 
cordance with the Word of God. The absolute value of the in- 
dividual in hell — make that as unsensuous as you please — is not 
an absolute value of any worth. It means alienation from the 
Kingdom of God, the Church triumphant. That is, it is the kind 
of an individual that has worth — the individual that has been 
realized as a member of the Kingdom. It is true that some self- 
styled liberal Christians in a number of our churches think and 
act under the principles of '^the age of reason," and talk to their 
flock about the liberty of every man's thinking as he pleases 
about the doctrines of their respective churches. The epithet 
liberal is not modest. And their talk about *^a religion for this 
age," or ''the Church of the future" for which they stand, does 
not make for the edifying of the religious nature of men, as it is 
generally intellectual rather than devotional. They represent 
only eddies in the great stream of the life of their churches. 
Protestants protested against the abuses and corruptions of 



14 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

the Church — protested against the decision of the Diet of Spires 
(a. d. 1529) when that Diet refused to reform these abuses and 
corruptions — and, historically speaking — ^the day for this pro- 
test is not yet over. Otherwise there is no reason against 
reunion with Rome. Certainly a reunited Christendom is the 
ideal Church of the future. But until Rome heeds the protest, 
it is difficult to hear with patience the voices of those in the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, who decry ''the mistake of the 
Reformation" and ''the failure of Protestantism," and labor for 
the expurgation of the word "Protestant" from the title of their 
Church^. 

It were vain to use words to tell of the ethical might of 
Protestantism. I only ask that its principles be not confused 
with the subjective, negative ones of "the Age of Reason." 
There no authoritative institutions were recognized. Hence 
they could and should be dissolved at the private conviction of 
any member of them. Dissent becamiC the rule, conformity the 
exception. 

Before the bar of the abstract reason of the individual — a 
sum total of clear and fixed notions, unenlightened by tra- 
ditional and current codes and customs, all institutions of hu- 
manity were summoned for trial, and all the holy and tender web 
of human affections and will were ignored. The growth of 
ideas, ideals and institutions was not recognized as the slow 
work of concrete reason in tha race and, through this, in the 
individuals supposed to be private. 

To-day organisms, creeds and concepts are regarded as evo- 
lutions of corporate humanity. The mental and moral con- 
cepts are looked upon as developments of the impulse towards 
rationality, done into men through history. That age and its 
abstract conception of reason is now the common object of criti- 
cism by men of science, art and literature as well as by moralists 
and ecclesiasts. Its philosophical quietus was given nearly at 

^Appendix, note i. 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 15 

the time of its origin in the utter intellectual scepticism of 
Hume. Its practical issue came in the ''reign of terror'' in the 
French Revolution. 

Within the limits of all the different schools of the enlight- 
enment — the prosy scholastic English Deism, the fiery, vindictive 
spirit and materialistic tone of the French Eclair cissementj and 
the idealistic form of the German Aufkldrung, there is found 
the same fundamental view of supremacy of the individual. 
The Common Creed was : I believe that I as an individual am 
the sole judge of what is good and true. I believe that ''man 
(the individual) is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.''^ 
I believe that the individual should resume his natural independ- 
ence — ^that all men are, by nature, free and equal. Priest-craft 
has forged the chains of an enslaving Church, state-craft those 
of governments, custom those of the family, and systems of 
thought those of theology and philosophy. I must assert my 
independence of all the vested rights of these tyrannies. Recog- 
nizing no organic connection of the individual with the past life 
of his people ; denying the historic conditions which had shaped 
his own opinions; lacking wholly the historical spirit and 
method, he continually asserted — I believe that the individual 
should be raised out of all these tyrannies into a position of 
supremacy over everything. Hitherto man has been in his 
nonage. O blessed time that was born for the individual to re- 
sume his natural freedom and rightful supremacy — Nullius ad- 
dictus jttrare in verba magistri. 

It is needless to trace the wide divergence in the thought and 
practice within this sophistic and nominalistic phase of thought. 
Any history of philosophy will give the details — Erdmann's 
probably the best. So too any history of the political, literary, 
social and ethical movements of that period in the different coun- 
tries where it prevailed, will fill out this barest of outlines, and 
show the historic worth and the practical and intellectual limita- 
tions and the final negativity of the whole movement. 
^ Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. I, ch. I, p. I. 



i6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

The function and worth of this movement should, of course, 
not be treated in a merely negative way. Both the historical 
and philosophical methods demand recognition of the function 
of non-conformity in all its forms. To put it in a phrase, it is 
the function of the negative in the pulse beat of life and thought 
— in the process of man's progress into rational freedom. It is 
a phase of reason both practical and speculative. Both are 
activities, always on the move ; always changing and transform- 
ing themselves ; always differentiating attained results and then 
going on to organize their differentiations into unity with the 
old — a perpetual play of identity and difference into a higher 
unity. Life is, to modify Spencer's formula, a continuous, 
though often apparently per saltum change from definite homo- 
geneity, through heterogeneity and differentiations, to more 
complex forms of homogeneity. Each age makes institutions, 
as embodying its practical reason. It does its creed into life, 
before it formulates it into thought. But nothing finite is per- 
fect. That is a platitude. But it is at the bottom of all criti- 
cism and of all progress. Each institution takes itself seriously 
as final. The world spirit denies this. It finds imperfection of 
function as new environment occurs. It becomes iconoclastic. 
But back of all forms of the negative, the impulse to rationality 
throbbing through humanity is only saying : 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." 

But no age does the work it thinks it is doing. Later -times 
evaluate all differently. ''After us the deluge" in a different 
sense than that meant in this proverb of self-conceit. It is the 
deluge of fertilizing rains and ploughings and harrowings and 
reaping of winnowed grain, sometimes tenfold and more. His- 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 17 

tory no longer recites merely the mistakes of men and institu- 
tions, but reads the phase of reason at work in them. It looks 
at them as expressions of the life of the times, rooted in previous 
conditions and preparing the way for new ones. In other 
words, it looks at the rationality of history, under the conception 
of an immanent impulse to rationality in humanity — a struggle 
towards concrete freedom. Chance and petty Providence, and 
decadence, and straightforward progress, and cycles are no 
longer the categories used to understand history. The concep- 
tion of development is the regnant conception. And develop- 
ment contains the negative, as the dynamic element of the 
process. In this progress of man into concrete freedom, every 
step forward is like walking — throwing one's self off of one's 
balance, or static condition, to catch the static form further 
along. The new good is ever coming by the negation of a past 
good, when that becomes good for but little. And yet the new 
is rooted in, and has its bond of continuity with, the old. 

"The history of the world is the judgment- of the world" — 
not the condemnation of any period or institution, but the valu- 
ation of them all as phases of rationality. "The history of the 
world, with all the changing scenes its annals present, is this 
process of the development and realization of spirit — this is the 
true Theodicy — the justification of God in history."^ 

The function of non-conformity in thought is also the func- 
tion of the negative — not that of the absolutely negative, but 
that of the fulfilling negative — itself being a phase of reason. 
It is thought's own self-imposed negative, a self-sacrifice as a 
stage towards fuller self-realization. It is the mediating ele- 
ment — ^the bridge that leads from a lower to a higher stage of 
thought. It is thought's own recognition of the inherent antin- 
omy involved in every finite statement, before it sees the higher 
point of view at which the antinomy is resolved. It is thought's 
own criticism of its uncriticised dogmas. And an uncriticised 

^ Hegel's Philosophy of History, p. 477 
2 



i8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

dogma soon loses its worth. It must criticise itself into oecu- 
menicity as the various ante-Nicene doctrines as to the person 
of Christ criticised themselves into the oecumenical dogma of 
the Divinity of Christ. So with the categories of thought. 
Each lower category is, and anon it is not, till it is seen fulfilled 
in a higher one. ''On stepping stones of its dead self" it rises to 
higher thoughts. This immanent criticism of the various cate- 
gories of thought up from that of mere empty being — as good as 
nothing — through those of quantity, substance, cause and effect 
to reciprocity and thence through mechanism, teleology, this 
criticism impels thought onward till that of absolute Self-con- 
sciousness is- reached, wherein all dialectic of the negative 
ceases. This is the work done by Hegel in his Logic, The 
negative is thus seen to be, not an alien force, but an immanent 
movement of life in each category. Finally it is seen to be the 
child of love — the condescension of the infinite to show the in- 
adequacy of the finite it had made, as a stage of truth. The 
key-word which Hegel uses to express this function of the nega- 
tive and its result, is Aufheben, This he tells us^ has the double 
signification of (i) to destroy or annul; (2) to preserve or 
fulfill. Thus the negative is iconoclastic and yet architectonic. 
Or rather concrete thought uses the negative as its organ for 
transforming any posited conception and at the same time ele- 
vating it. Thus the gospel annuls the law, the fruit the blossom, 
the man the child, the true the false, the infinite the finite — by 
fulfilling them. 

Thus all non-conformity in creed or deed is a positive nega- 
tive, or has the positive function of transforming and fulfilling 
outworn creed and institution. It is itself not without form, 
though often it hides itself under this veil. 

But taken by itself at one stage — the stage of protest — ere 
it has yet taken up the good and true in the old — it has the form 
of moral and intellectual scepticism. And that was the evil 

^ Logic, § 96. 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTFIORITY 19 

element in the Age of Reason, That age is now stigmatized on 
all hands, as ''the unhistorical age." It is called ''the age of 
abstract reason," as it ignored the concrete contents of human 
nature as educated through ages of social organisms. It is 
faulted for not seeing that what one thinks and does, depend 
upon his intellectual and ethical heritage and environment, 
through which the individual is informed, enlightened, rational- 
ized by conformity, conscious or unconscious. Psychology, 
sociology, science, history, literature and politics alike scoff at 
its abstract conception of reason and individuality. 

The reason that is now appealed to as authoritative, is not 
that of any and every empirical individual, except so far as he 
has had the corporate reason of mankind worked into him by 
education. To repeat Aristotle's illustration, a hand cut off 
from the living body is no longer a hand. So the individual 
apart from vital relations with the intellectual and social organ- 
isms, ceases to be an organ of reason, theoretical or practical. 
The conception that science, sociology and philosophy now give 
of the individual is that of an organic member of an organic 
system. 

Still it IS possible for the most advanced thinkers, to write 
and fight on the over-come standpoint of sheer individualism. 
Thus Professor Seth says : "Each self is a unique existence, 
which is perfectly impervious^ if I may so say, to other selves — 
impervious in a fashion of which the impenetrability of matter 
is a faint analogue. The self, accordingly, resists invasion : in 
its character of self it refuses to admit another self within itself, 
and thus be made, as it were, a mere retainer of something 
else."^ I have elsewhere^ commented on this frank expression 
of the old conception of individualism. In the same connection 
he speaks of the self being "in existence or metaphysically, a 
principle of isolation.^' 

Etymologically, it is true, an individual is an undividable 

^ Seth's Hegelianism and Personality, p. 22^. 

^Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, pp. 170-175. 



20 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

atom. Individuus is the Latin for the aro/xos of Democritus. 
But in neither physics or metaphysics is such a thing ever 
more than a convenient fiction. At most an individual is 
one of its kind or genus, and is real only as it includes its kind 
by participation. Its kind is the prior and essential condition of 
the reality of any of its own being. The kind, the genus is real, 
though not real apart from its self-differentiation into organic 
members, as the body is not a real living body apart from its 
self-specification into organic members. It is this conception of 
organic membership, of function within a system, that is now 
the dominant conception of the individual. This is true even in 
physics. There are not a lot of impervious, isolated forces ; but 
there is a system of forces, as self-specifications of one force. 
So with human individualities. The conception of uniqueness 
as the essential character of an individual has been greatly 
modified. "There is none like myself' is too ungeneric a con- 
ception. I am one of my kind, and I am I, only so far as I open 
my windows and let in the universal, kindred reality. Again 
this universal is not an abstract, unmediated universal. It is 
specified in others with whom I am in essential relations physical, 
mental and moral. The concrete individual is a whole complex 
of hereditary and environing elements held together in one con- 
sciousness, which itself exists only in relation to the not self 
and to other selves. He is unique only as a member of an 
organism through which the pulse beat of the kind throbs. 
Hand, nor head, nor heart can do their work unless they are or- 
ganic members of a higher organic unity. 

Such illustrations from physical organisms must not be 
taken as more than feeble analogies of the moral organisms of 
humanity. We know how many students of anthropology and 
sociology press the analogy into identity, thus interpreting all 
forms of mental and moral organisms as physical rather than 
spiritual. This is too often the bad metaphysic accompanying 
good science. The analogy of a physical organism is reduced to 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 21 

that of an automatic mechanism and then used to interpret all 
personal and sociological forms. 

But, as a living man cannot even as a physical organism be 
explained by all that is necessary to explain a corpse, so an 
ethical organism cannot be explained as a physical one can be. 
Thus far we have an analogy for ethical organisms. Here the 
analogy ends. For in a physical organism we do not have mem- 
bers that are self-conscious and capable of determining them- 
selves as functions of the whole — of realizing themselves by 
realizing the kind of the whole. Here means and end become 
more vitally reciprocal. The organs are themselves organisms 
in a sense that a hand is not. So means and ^end cease to be 
relatively external. Society is not an external means for the 
welfare of the individual as Spencer holds, nor are individuals 
external means for the welfare of society, as 'many empirical 
sociologists hold. Society does not pass away when it has per- 
fected a lot of individuals, as at would were it only an external 
means. So far as we can think it is as eternal as man. Nor 
can we think of a lot of perfected men out of a kingdom or re- 
public. 

Spencer's "man versus the state" is a man-destroying con- 
ception. Again, while moral organisms are the conditions of 
the moral life of individuals, its members have a personal worth 
of their own, as members of physical organisms do not. 
Apart from some such membership, they might be physical or- 
ganisms — a lot of individual bodies — in that state of nature 
which Hobbes characterized as a bellum omnium contra omnes, 
where the life of the individuals would be '^solitary, poor, nasty, 
brutish and short." 

Any sociology that explains individuals as mechanical parts 
of a quasi-physical organism — fails to recognize the place and 
worth of members in ethical organisms. Ethics is not physics, 
any more than psychology is physiology — as Hobbes and some 
new psychologists maintain. 

It IS this error of explaining the higher by the lower; of 



22 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

carrying a physical explanation into non-physical realms that is 
to blame for our repugnance to the social view of man. And 
we ought to revolt from any theory that negates the comparative 
worth of the individual. I am a member, and yet / am I. 
Through me the whole kind pulsates, and yet I am I. True it 
is that I am not I, if I am not one of my kind, if the kindred 
spirit does not pulsate through me. But I am a conscious mem- 
ber. I can consciously conform to the life of the whole — play 
my part in the common life, mind my own business as a member 
incorporate and thus fulfill myself in fulfilling my function in the 
social whole. 

The uniqueness of individuality is the uniqueness of function 
or purpose within a systematic unity, which realizes itself in and 
through its differentiations into members or organs. But 
within this higher unity — say humanity — each organ is itself a 
systematic unity, of self and not self and of the various ''mes" 
within myself, to use James' expression. 

One's own individual self is the constant identity in differ- 
ence. Take such expressions as the following: ''I was not 
myself when I did that;" ''she has never been the same since 
her child died ;" '1 don't feel a bit like myself to-day ;" ''he was 
more of himself " or "less than himself when he did that;" "/ 
am ashamed of myself for doing that ;" or take the religious ex- 
pressions "grant that the old Adam in this person may be so 
buried that the new man may be raised up in him ;" "it is no 
longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me ;" or take the illus- 
tration given by hypnotism and abnormal psychology as to "al- 
ternate" and "multiple personalities" in the same individual, and 
one may see how the static conception of individuality must be 
corrected. 

Then too the content of the individual will be seen to be one 
chiefly of relations to other selves. It is true that without re- 
flection we forget this social content of the individual. Tarde 
says : "Every social man is a veritable hypnotic. Both the 
hypnotic and the social man are possessed by the illusion that 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 23 

their ideas, all of which have been suggested to them, are spon- 
taneous/' 

Be the uniqueness of the individual what it may, it is always 
within, and as a member of, a larger organism. This is seen if 
we make an inventory of the contents of an individual of even 
so-called marked personality. Or any one may make this analy- 
sis of his own individuality. I, John , as a moral person 

can only define myself as an unknown x, till I see how I am de- 
fined and fulfilled by my social relations, (a) of heredity, and 
(&) of social environment, of family, race, school, church so- 
ciety, avocation and state, (a) I did not beget myself, or choose 
my parents, my name and the conditions of life into which I was 

born. I am the son of who was the son of another, back 

to Adam, as many of the Jews now trace their pedigree. St. 
Matthew's Gospel begins thus : *The book of the generation of 
Jesus Christ." St. Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus back 
through David, Abraham and Seth, ''which was the son of 
Adam, which was the Son of God."^ 

Biographers begin with pedigrees. Their heroes are some- 
body primarily because they are somebody's child. Surely 
Marcus Aurelius was one of the strongest and noblest of moral 
personalities. Note how he begins those ''Thoughts' that have 
been a moral tonic to all generations since he wrote. He 
specifies what he owed to his great-grandfather, grandfather, 
father and mother, before he goes on to specify what he owes to 
other fellowmen. "To the gods I am indebted for having good 
grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good 
associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good."^ 

Then (&) I John , was not, thank God, born out of 

but into a world of kindred fellow men ; first into the warm and 
tender atmosphere of a home which has saturated and formed 
my likes and dislikes, my tastes, habits, opinions — my ineradi- 
cable prejudices. So deeply have I been dyed by my domestic 

' St. Luke in. 23, 38. 

* The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus, Bk. I, 17. 



24 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

atmosphere, that I find I cannot rub it off nor root it out. I now 
recognize the organic hfe of my family throbbing in every 
ethical vein of myself. First, then, I am what I am because I 
have been the son of somebody, an organic member of some 
family and some pulses of that family spirit still throb through 
me, making me have family peculiarities, traits, dispositions, 
prejudices and character, however much of a cosmopolite I have 
since become. 

Again, I am what I am, more or less, from the place in which 
I was born. If so fortunate as to have a good birthplace as 
well as good parents, I always mention this as giving me an 
added worth and some presupposed excellent characteristics. 
How often we hear one say : "I am from Boston," ''I am from 
Virginia, you know,'' insinuating that he is to be taken as pos- 
sessing the marked fine traits of character that are attributed to 
his birthplace. When my birth-place is without repute, I feel 

a certain sense of humiliation in being introduced to Mr. , 

from a notable city, or town, or county. So too the disclosure 
the student makes in saying, "I'm from Harvard," or 'T'm from 
Yale," are forms of self-appreciation, through places and the 
culture that they represent. 

Again from being a son, I have become a father. A new 
domestic ethos permeates and enlarges me. Then I have be- 
come more of a somebody, as I have multiplied my relations to 
my fellow men. Every new circle that I have entered has a 
definite constitution and unwritten traditions, customs and es- 
prit de corps. All the generic fund of human culture in these 
circles have been throbbing through me, as a worthy conform- 
ing member of them. I have been moralized as I have become 
habituated to the habits and opinions and spirit — the prejudices 
of my school, church, social set, fraternity, learned society, polit- 
ical party, social and patriotic organization. So, if I am to tell 
who I am, I must add to my pedigree all social filiations, that is, 
societies of which I am a filius — son. All of them have been 
quasi-^dstntdA authorities, in conscious or unconscious submis- 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 25 

sion to which I have been becoming a more cultivated man. 
The mother-tongue of all these societies has become my lan- 
guage, the means of social self-expression. I know that my 
conversation betrays the societies to which I belong. I know 
that it is the warm life-blood of them that pulsates through and 
keeps me alive and growing. I recognize that apart from them 
I should be a nobody. All lay their authoritative commands 
upon me. These are my duties in those stations in life to which 
it hath pleased nature, or chance, or God to call me. They all 
limit my capricious subjective whims of impulse. 

But in these duties I also recognize my rights, functions that 
belong to me as a cultivated man. In these duties I find my 
liberation, that is, my self-realization. I am an integer by being 
an integral member of these social circles. My uniqueness has 
been becoming more and more the uniqueness of my kinds. 
My integrity is conformity to their customs, laws and spirit — 
to the duties of each sphere. My virtues, I see, to be nearly all 
relative to the functions I have as an organic member of these 
warm, human moral organisms. I find that Schiller was right 
when he said : '''Be a whole, or join a whole. You cannot be 
a whole unless you join a whole." By all these I have been con- 
verted from a mere empty possibility into what I really am. 
These duties are objective, concrete and substantial, not begot- 
ten of my own subjective caprice. They are not, however, 
foreign to my real self, but kindred. These ethical organisms 
not only punish me for non-conformity, but I punish myself for 
not being a good member of them, because without the fulfill- 
ing these imposed duties I have not the rights that belong 
to me by nature — that is, by my second, converted, realized na- 
ture of manhood. My right to life is not merely a private right. 
And, as Aristotle says,^ I have not the right to deal unjustly 
to myself — ^to commit suicide. That would be a crime against 
my family and community. Self-preservation is a duty im- 

^ Aristotle's Ethics, Bk. IV, chap. xvi. 



2!S THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

posed on me by the community for the good of the community, 
and at the same time a right conferred on me as a privilege. 

On the other hand, I find that I cannot sectarianize myself 
from these institutions without losing my rights — that apart 
from family I cannot be a good father or son; apart from 
church I cannot nourish my religious nature and so on through 
all the spheres in which I am a somebody. 

I recognize the truth in Plato's saying 'The State is man 
writ large." And I recognize the profound pedagogy embodied 
in his ''Republic." Pedagogy is the art of making men ethical, 
and nowhere has there been such a classical scheme of ethical 
education as that embodied in this immortal work. 

I, John — , have therefore made it a rule to multiply 

my relations in order to increase myself, rather than to schism.a- 
tize myself and thus minimize myself. And so I pray : From 
all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion ; from all false doc- 
trine, heresy and schism — in my relations to all these ethical or- 
ganisms — ''Good Lord deliver me." Divorced from them I die. 
"Till death us part," then, let me be a living member of these 
ethical circles. And then, 

"Till death us join, 
O voice yet more divine/' 

So speaks the heart and the whole concrete ethical nature of 
man. What would heaven be without mother, wife, child, all 
those 

"Relations dear and all the charities 
Of father, son and brother" ? 

So we have "common worship" and "corporate commun- 
ion," as means of our corporate salvation, till we are come into 
the corporate Kingdom of the Church triumphant, with its vari- 
ous circles of corporate unions. 

But this is beyond the sphere of conventional morality, and, 
at present, we are dealing only with this lower phase. 

So we return to the question that has constantly been trying 
to voice itself in the midst of all this talk about organisms and 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 2-7 

authority and conformity. Let us now utter it frankly and 
boldly. What place in all this is left for freedom and the rights 
of the individual ? Has not the individual been reduced to be- 
ing a mere cog in a wheel of a big machine — that turns only as 
it is compelled to turn — not playing its own part or doing its 
own duty, but being turned this way or that by the mechanical 
power that drives the whole ? 

Yet, after reflection, our quest for freedom seems very like 
that of Plato and his friends for Justice, i. e., righteousness 
(StKatoo-wiy), after having modeled the ideal city as a large 
illustration of ''the city within." The model was that of a moral 
organism in which each member performed his own function — 
a civic symphony, in which each had a part to play. Having 
discovered wisdom and courage and temperance in this body 
politic, he proposes that they now hunt for the other cardinal 
virtue — justice. ''Let us stand like a party of hunters round a 
cover, lest she escape us." Soon he adds : "Surely we have 
been behaving very stupidly because the thing has been tumb- 
ling at our feet all the time. * ^ ^ For the cardinal principle of 
our ideal commonwealth was that every individual in it was to 
have some function, be conscious of this function and then 
fulfil it, i. e., mind his own business, or do his own duty. But 
is not the very essence of justice?" ^'Then justice," he adds, 
"is not simply one among the other virtues. But rather it is 
that which creates and sustains the others."^ So too, he goes 
on to show, it is with justice in "the city within." One is just 
where he has "organized himself" and "made himself completely 
a unity out of multiplicity," by having each part of his nature 
play its own part, through the pulsing of this organic unity 
through them all. This is righteousness and health and free- 
dom.2 

So too freedom has been "tumbling at our feet" all through 
our talk about authority and conformity and moral organisms. 

^ Plato's Republic, Bk. IV, 432-433. 
^/Z?iJ., Bk. IV, 448. 



28 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Freedom is each one's playing his own part, doing his own duty, 
performing his own function in the social tissues, the moral or- 
ganisms, of which he is a member — apart from which, and the 
realization of which, he is nothing. Authority and conformity 
and function are really organic elements of concrete freedom. 
Freedom is not only essential to morality. Freedom is mor- 
ality, or rather morality is freedom. 

The subjective elements of personal conviction and self-de- 
termination are certainly elements in concrete freedom. The 
element of choice means that man has power, within limits, to 
choose that to which he conforms. In rational freedom, it 
means the power to choose to conform to his typal self. This 
is only possible for the relatively good man — ^the man moralized 
by conformity to good customs. Milton says : ''None can love 
freedom heartily but good men : the rest love not freedom but 
license." Absolute freedom, in the sense of individual license, 
is intolerable in any rational form of life. To choose rationally, 
then, one must first be good. And he becomes good by choos- 
ing that which pleases the moral societies of which he is a 
member; that is, by conforming to authorities, not evolved 
from his own inner consciousness. There is no real freedom 
in choosing to act like the devil. But whatever he chooses must 
have some determinate form of good or evil, that are relatively 
objective. Whence those forms? Is the moral man ever au- 
tonomous, as Kant held, in the sense of begetting from within 
these forms that make his freedom objective and concrete ? Our 
discussion of abstract individuality shows us that he is not. The 
rather he is, to use the term so repugnant to Kant, heferonomous 
— finding the laws to which he conforms to be in others — the 
typal laws of his kind — and, ultimately, in God, the great Com- 
panion and Educator of Mankind, by means of social, moral in- 
stitutions. The individual's imperium is always in imperio — in 
some form of the kingdom of man, which is always some form 
of the Kingdom of God. Thus, real freedom is just ''the thing 
which has all the time been tumbling about our feet." In a word 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 29 

we have been dealing with the genesis of the good man — with 
his rational self-realization or concrete freedom. Beginning 
with a relatively ''given" element — the idiosyncrasy of the babe 
— we have seen how, by conforming to relative expressions of 
the type of manhood in the institutions into which he has been 
born without any choice, he comes to relatively perfect man- 
hood, which cannot choose to do anything unmanly. 

"I dare do all that may become a man : 
Who dares do more is none." 

But still comes the protest that a conformist cannot be free. 
Do we mean that the good father, son, citizen, churchman — the 
one who conforms himself to the ideals of these relationships, 
is less free than the one who does not? It is surely my duty 
and right to realize my ego, but it must be my summus ego. 
But this summus ego exists in no mere individual. It is gen- 
eric, and I can only make it mine own by conformity to the 
genus. It will not do to take the merely subjective standpoint 
and say I am not free unless I can choose what I please. I must 
will only myself. Does that mean I must will self-will? If so, 
which self ? Again, would that be freedom if the will which I 
will is not itself self-created instead of being "given" to every 
individual? Yet apart from this given will, man can will 
nothing, and with it he can will nothing unless he wills some 
objective content.^ So even the liberty of caprice becomes a 
liberty of conformity. 

Society always takes care of the kind of a thing which the 
individual chooses. I cannot do what I please, if I am to do 
what I should as a man. At least it depends upon what kind of 
a man I am. Unless I am a good mannered man, I shall find no 
place to do as I please, except in a desert, and there I should 

* The classical characterization of both extremes has been made once 
for all by Erdmann in his Psychologie, § 160. 

"The doctrine of determinism (conformity) is a will which wiiis noth- 
ing, which has not the form of will : the doctrine of indeterminism is 
a will which wills nothings a will with no content/' 



30 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

soon be pleased to return to society. ''Me this unchartered free- 
dom tires." But in society, the insane asylum, prison walls and 
the electric chair await me, if I do not please to do as my fellows 
please. It is this shallow conception of doing as one pleases in 
order to be free, that is the lingering heritage and heresy of the 
eighteenth century rationalism. It takes freedom in its 
etymological sense, (liber ^ freon + dom) i e., to be free from 
dominion. That is, freedom is a privative term, meaning to be 
free from everything but self, let this self be what it may — ^the 
empirical self of the stubborn child or of the bad man. Emanci- 
pation from dominion must be from the cradle to the grave — 
wherever there is an empirical me. I am only free when I can 
assert my own private, peculiar self. 

I demur to the pedagogic maxim that everybody is some- 
body's child. That will do for children — no child is his own 
child. That is a silly platitude. But I am a man, and I can do 
as I please. I am nobody's child. Yes ! But you are not your 
own child. At least you have been begotten of a father, and 
begotten into un-chosen environments. As a man, you may be 
self-made, and very well made at that, but you have none the less 
made yourself under sustaining and helpful social environment. 
In a desert you would have made a very different sort of a 
being — at best, a Mogli. 

You are a man and you can do as you please. Yes, but you 
are a man because you have the manners of a man. Yes, with- 
in certain socially prescribed limits. And then even those 
things indifferent are made indifferent by society. It will even 
allow a man to play the harlequin on the stage, or to play the 
bear with his children. Society recognizes, as belonging to 
the function of every member even a relatively capricious sort 
of choice — a sphere of ''things indifferent.'' But the freedom 
accorded by society is always within the limits of the human. 
Its object is to "turn out men." 

But when we turn to mere capricious choosing, which de- 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITK 31 

clines any of the definitely human forms, we are turning away 
from freedom. 

"Insist upon yourself; never imitate," says Emerson. But 
if the self is bad or worthless, such self-insistence is suicidal 
and, socially, criminal. 

Christianity says that such a man is a slave. Protestantism 
never maintained the right of the individual to choose to glorify 
and enjoy himself. ''The chief end of man is to glorify God and 
to enjoy Him forever," in all the corporate forms of life here 
and hereafter. Man's chief end is to be attained ; his real free- 
dom won, by his choosing to be a ministering member of God's 
kingdom. ''God's service is perfect freedom." And when 
Protestantism comes to specify just what God's service is, it has 
always done full justice to the earthly institutions of the family, 
church, state and the various other forms of civilized life. It 
has never represented God's service as mere abstract spirituality. 
It has been the most potent factor in all forms of social 
righteousness, because it has insisted that God's kingdom is to 
have as its nursery a terrestrial kingdom. 

But, it is objected again, that all men are by nature free and 
equal. This is only true when nature is used in Aristotle's sense 
of the fully realized man. Taking it in the empirical sense, it is 
patent that men are by nature unequal. It is only by means of 
a common equal education, intellectual and moral, that men 
become equal in a community. That is the ideal of modern 
politics, but not the empirical reality that faces us. A law is a 
liberty because it enounces a principle, conformity to which 
helps realize man's common, equal nature. If all men should 
at all times conform to all the intellectual moral, social and 
political laws of their community, there would be more truth in 
the saying that "all men are by nature free and equal." And 
in such conditions of objective liberty there would be more room 
for the free play of educated individuality. Authorities are 
objective reason— empirically the reason of the community, 
grounded in and grades of the Reason of the Universe. What 



32 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

folly then — a folly nowheres tolerated — that any and every man 
should have the right to choose as he pleases in every sphere of 
thought and action. The narrow minded, the ignorant, the 
vicious — all these are our fellow men. Must each one of them 
say with the sophists of old, I am the measure of all things? 
My pint cup measure is as true as the measures given by any 
standardizing Bureau of Weights and Measures. Brother Jas- 
per's measure gives us the sun moving around the earth. Sister 
Smith prescribes for the diphtheria what cured her of a colic. 
And so, through all the orthodox forms of logic, science and 
morals, each man is to be his own judge of what is good and 
true. Plato, in criticising the sophists, playfully suggests that 
this emancipation be extended to the baboon.^ Let the ape have 
his right of private judgment. Let emancipation from common 
laws be universal. Let every man of any community be per- 
mitted to violate every good form, in logic, language, morals, 
manners, religion ; let every one think and do as he pleases and 
then — how soon the community would cease to be. Communal 
laws, authorities, dispositions, however, have always protested 
against such protesting non-conformity. Authority has always 
stood for objective reason, in conforming to which individuals 
become more and more free and equal. Authority is always a 
form of objective reason, and freedom is always formed will, 
will habituated, to good manners. 

Nor, again, will it do to define freedom as the power to 
choose between indifferent or opposite things — ^the libertas ar- 
bitrii or the libertas indifferentiae. Any psychological analysis 
will show the impossibility of this. Motiveless choice is mo- 
tionlessness of will. Buridan's ass, starving to death between 
two equal and equally distant bunches of hay, because he lacked 
this liberty of indifference, is an ass that never existed. If I 
could choose without motives, then I could never say to my 
friend, you can depend upon my doing this rather than that. 
The rather, I would have to say to him, there's no accounting 

*The3etetus, i6i. 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 33 

for what I may do at any time. Nor could we ever predict what 
our friend might do. There would be no depending upon any- 
body's course of action, because of this liberty of caprice. Is 
not our character, our conformed ''formed will," that which 
gives our friend ground to depend upon us? The more thor- 
oughly formed our will is, the more accurately he can predict 
just what we shall do in certain circumstances. He knows that 
we have not liberty of caprice in virtue of which we can choose 
to do either the right or wrong thing at any time. 

The truth is that as I am so I will choose. I choose what is 
congruous with my formed self at the moment of choosing. The 
man is the will. So it makes much difference what sort of man 
it is that chooses. I may act like an angel or like an ass, like 
Philip drunk or Philip sober, if I let the empirical ego of the mo- 
ment be the man. And this I must do, if I do not have character 
— a formed state of the will. It is only so far as our will is not 
thoroughly habituated or conformed to good forms that we can 
say with Ovid, Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor; or 
with St. Paul, "the good that I would do I do not, but the evil 
that I would not that I do." (Romans vii, 19.) Nor can I 
ascribe it to myself if I follow the meliora and to the devil if I 
follow the deteriora. As Aristotle taught, a man is equally re- 
sponsible for both kinds of action — even where he has so char- 
acterized himself in evil ways as to be incapable of good action.^ 
The only way to real freedom is conformity of the empirical 
selves in me to an ideal self, which, we have seen, is a social self. 
It is in this sense that St. Paul, when he felt that he was con- 
formed to Christ, could say, 'Tt is no longer I" — the empty or 
bad empirical self — "but Christ that liveth in me." The true 
self is always an alter ego — the social self. And true freedom is 
the conduct* congruous with this other self. I have freedom in 
bonds, not freedom from bonds. Thus I am only free when I 
am not free from social functions,, from functioning as a good 
parent or child, citizen or churchman. 

^ Aristotle's Ethics, Bk. Ill, chap. vii. 
3 



34 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

But I may have so conformed to the manners of thieves, that 
I cannot conform to the manners of honest gentry. This is St. 
Augustine's doctrine, as well as that of Aristotle and St. Paul. 
He describes the state of the non posse non peccare as well as 
the beata necessitas non posse peccare. As I am so I act. My 
conduct is determined by my character. 

But as I act, I become. That is, character is rarely more 
than relatively characterized. I am becoming free is the most 
we can say. I am ''organizing myself" as a good member of 
society by my more or less conscious conformity to consti- 
tuted social authorities. I like or dislike this or that as my 
taste has been cultivated towards objective standards. The 
whole of my self-culture has been in the medium of social cul- 
ture. My conscience — using this complex of judgment, and 
emotion in the popular sense — rests upon a basis of social 
authority. As Green says : ''No individual can make a con- 
science for himself. He always needs a society to make it for 
him. A conscientious heresy, religious or political, always 
represents some gradually maturing social conviction as to the 
social good, already implicitly involved in the ideas on which 
the accepted rules of conduct rest."^ 

The conscience of the good man has a history. It is an 
educated conscience. It becomes relatively inerrant as it be- 
comes less private and more socialized. Its autonomy rests 
upon heteronomy, as this last ultimately rests upon and is de- 
rived from a theonomy. The voice of conscience is the voice 
of God, as mediated by all his human means of revelation. 
There is no absolute autonomous or self-lawgiving man, except 
in the sense of imposing upon himself laws which are not of his 
own making, though seen to be laws in conformity with which 
alone he can realize his essential nature. It is my conscience 
because it is the internalization in my consciousness of concrete, 
objective moral laws, imbedded in personal feelings. It is the 
public conscience, in so far as that is the work of the immanent 

'^Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 351. 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 35 

law-giver, operative in the processes of human history, giving 
men ideals of a common good, and progressively expanding 
and elevating their ideals of this common good. 

The whole is a process of self- realization, or a progress into 
freedom. In this process there is always authority and always 
conformity. Compulsory morality is not as good as none. 
For there is no morality without the element of compulsion. In 
its lowest external form it is at least educative to a higher self- 
compelled morality. And in the morality of the best of men it 
takes the more spiritual form of the Divine compulsion. 

In all its forms it must be strictly distinguished from phys- 
ical, mechanical compulsion. It is in a realm where the cate- 
gories of physics have no subject matter and where teleology 
supplants mechanism. It is the immanent end in the race and 
in its members expressing itself in good forms. Even the lowest 
form and certainly the highest form of compulsion in morality, 
is rather that of persuasion. We persuade or dissuade our 
children as to certain courses of conduct by personal influence 
and example ; by line upon line and precept upon precept. All 
forms of our social relations persuade or dissuade as to certain 
forms of conduct. We are thus educated into conviction as to 
right ways of action. So God compels — persuades mankind 
into better and better forms of living. This persuasive form of 
the Divine grace is mediated to individuals through social in- 
stitutions. This central principle of persuasive authority is that 
of the Christian doctrine of Divine Grace, so that ultimately 
man is finding that conformity to God's authority, — ^that is, 
"God's service" is "perfect freedom." 

But here we have again transcended (a) the standpoint of 
conventional morality and the utter conformity of the individual 
to the prescriptions of his sets. In fact we have also tran- 
scended, (b) the standpoint of morality altogether — even the 
subjective standpoint of the good will, or duty for duty's sake. 

We have reached the standpoint that everybody is always 
God/s child. Even though he be a prodigal son, the dialectic of 



Z6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

both thought and Hfe is a compulsory or persuasive power to 
take him back to the Father. This is the theological doctrine of 
Divine Grace, so emphasized by St. Paul, St. Augustine and 
John Calvin. It is the central principle of theology, the soul of 
mysticism and the heart of religion. When freed from its acci- 
dental limitations, even its negative form of Divine wrath as a 
consuming fire, is seen to be a phase of Divine Grace, as it 
sweeps onward to convert even the devil himself and to drown 
out the inextinguishable fires of an everlasting hell, leaving at 
most the refining and transforming experience of a purgatory. 
The future Divine Comedy, when a new Dante is born to write 
it, will drop the Inferno or at least its everlasting character, mak- 
ing it the lowest circle of God's educational school of a P^irga- 
forio, 

(a) We have transcended the standpoint of merely conven- 
tional morality, though we have maintained that it is educative 
of the form of conscience, so that private judgment becomes the 
judgment of a man, not that of an ass or a criminal. 

We have throughout used the term Reason in its most con- 
crete sense, as including and fulfilling both abstractions of in- 
tellectualism and pragmatism. And we have impliedly worked 
with the presupposition that this concrete reason in mankind, 
is the progressive utterance of the universal concrete Reason in 
the dialects of various peoples and ages. Thus we have im- 
plicitly acknowledged the imperfection of the finite, whose only 
glory is that of being a stage through which the glory of the 
infinite pulses and shines. 

What need for us, therefore, to retrace our pages and specify 
the limitations of conventional morality? Yet a brief sketch of 
this process of transcendence may be in place. 

First, any status quo of any ethical organism may be one of 
corruption and decadence. There are rotten stages of all forms 
of ethical organizations. There are times when men are not 
better but worse than their creeds. The fundamental principles, 
the traditions and customs of a virile, pristine organism may 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 37 

all be violated secretly or openly. These are the times for 
reformers to arise. But reformers never use their own private 
judgment. It is in the name of the letter and spirit of the 
acknowledged authorities that they protest. They are indi- 
viduals who have been thoroughly imbued with the principles of 
their organization, whose characters have been formed into full 
conformity with its letter and spirit. They cannot smother 
their social conscience or gloss departure in others from its dic- 
tates. They seek, primarily, only to have men conform to the 
professed conventional morality. Be true to the ideals of thy 
set ; return to the * 'good old times." The Reformer's first cry is, 
be loyal — a cry of conservatism. His spirit is filial — that of the 
Fifth Commandment towards his society. He criticises current 
corruptions by the institution itself. 

But, secondly, the reformer is always w^ore than a mere con- 
servative of the past of his institution. Every restoration turns 
out to be a revolution. And this is because of the inherent dia- 
lectic of every finite form. Be the conformity absolutely 
perfect, the form itself is imperfect. The status quo is never 
the status finalis. Old forms are not only slighted and become 
corrupt, but they become old. Civilizations rise, ripen and rot. 
Yet ever, phoenix like, they rise again out of their ashes, but 
rise transformed. Finality of any status quo means lack of 
virility and final sterility. The morality of the Chinese has been 
stigmatized as this dead sort of life in death. Surely we must 
recognize the limitations of the Chinese phase of culture. But 
surely, too, we should recognize that it has, at least, given them 
the blessing annexed to the Fifth Commandment — ''that thy 
days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
thee." The Chinese surely have this blessing because they are 
at the opposite pole of practice from that too regnant in our own 
country that makes the Fifth Commandment to read, ^'Parents, 
obey your children." With what delightful humour Plato 
plays with this conception of the younger teaching their elders 
— especially in his character of Polus in The Gorgias. 



38 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

The Chinese have a very perfect form of education for pro- 
ducing this conservative spirit — that of the memorization of 
their classics. Too much memorizing means too Httle reflection. 
Besides, that which is memorized by the Chinese, is the v^isdom 
of the past. They aim at, and attain, reverence for the past. 
Let the present be Hke the past, is their ideal. It conserves the 
paternal, or the great-grandfather form of the civilization. 
They seem to be impervious to the restless dialectic of the on- 
forcing negative. They have not learned the comparative 
degree of the good, or they have confounded the positive degree 
with the superlative. The good of the past is the best for the 
present. There is no better. 

But the immanent dialectic in all forms, is that the good 
implies a better, and that, a best. No good status quo is as 
good as the best. The best criticises the good into the better, 
out of the old into the new. A break with the past and the 
present — though never absolute — is the law of all life. It is the 
diversity asserting itself in the identity, though continuity be 
preserved. The ''is'^ is always running into ''the is to be." The 
new is always taking the place of the old, but only as it grows 
out of the old, and fulfills it — fills it so full that ''the new wine 
bursts the old bottles." It is a movement from within that is 
essentially one of self-development. It is a practical recogni- 
tion, in a word, of the finiteness of the finite and of its imma- 
nence in the infinite. It is the gradual conformation of 
everything to its type or kind. It is never a mechanical develop- 
ment, of which the lower is the cause. The rather, too, it is a 
pull rather than a push that effects the elevation. The cause 
is teleological. It is the end, the good sought by the lower, that 
draws. And this, traced to the end of the dialectic, is the old 
doctrine of Philosophy — Plato's Good, and, more concretely, the 
Christian doctrine of Divine grace. Man can no more 

''Erect himself above himself" 
than Miinchhausen could pull himself out of the mire by his 
own cue. The evolution of man is not a mere unfolding of 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 39 

what was really in the lower form, out of which he has been de- 
veloped. 

"A spark disturbs our clod/' 

In man there is a greater than man, that urges upward. It 
is this immanent impulse to rationality in life and thought that 
is the ultimate cause of any change being a progress instead a 
retrogression. Progress can only mean movement towards an 
end. The good moves us by ideals that are better and better, 
nearer approximations to The Best — ^the Absolute Good — God. 

But such impulse to progress in morality means the relativity 
of conventional morals! Yes. ^'New occasions teach new 
duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth." Yes, and the 
perfect and full form has never yet been realized on earth except 
in the God-man, Christ Jesus. It is this imperfection of any 
existing status quo in society, the state and the church, that is 
the dialectic to higher forms. Yes, we have transcended the 
standpoint of absolute conformity to conventional morality. 
But we have also 

(b) Transcended the standpoint of morality itself. That 
standpoint is the interaction of the good will and good forms for 
the good will. Authorities are the objective forms of the good, 
which the good will must will to be good. Service is a right as 
well as a duty. Service is freedom. Ich diene dasz Ich bin. 

And yet the same dialectic of non-conformity that drives or 
lures us from one form of any moral organism to a higher form, 
also impels us to transcend this whole sphere of the good will 
and of conformity to conventional morality. For, at best, it is a 
sphere of the imperfect. The imperfection of the finite not only 
attaches to any one particular form, it attaches to the form of 
morality itself. The will is weak. The sight is blurred. Duty 
for duty's sake becomes an abstraction, and the soul faints in its 
fruitless efforts at self-salvation. Not only is the statiis quo of 
any institution in an unstable equilibrium; not only is every 
time out of joint and every age an age of transition, in progres- 



40 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

sive morality, but morality itself is always out of joint, and its 
immanent dialectic forces to religion. 

First, then, we find that not only the best convential moral- 
ity implies a better, but also that even the best of morality 
implies a discord in man's nature — a discord between the "is" 
and ''ought to be." There is this in the individual. Put in 
religious language it is the strife between the old man and the 
new man. In morality, it is that between the lower and the 
higher self, or that between the different ''mes" in the indi- 
vidual. Then there is the discord between his social morality 
and the ''ought to be." Conformity is never realized by the 
individual, and the "ought to be" is never actualized in any 
moral organism of which he is a member. At best, one is a frag- 
ment, and the institutions themselves are fragments of The 
Best. Conforming membership in a good institution is never 
perfect and the institution of which one is a conforming mem- 
ber, is itself imperfect. Moral pathology is common, then, to 
both members and organisms. The good will in both is also 
never quite good.^ 

Again, even if morality could heal this breach, it would not 
be the full realization or freedom of man. He has needs, tastes, 
desires, capacities beyond the sphere of morality as such. Art 
and religion and philosophy have a super-morality function in 
the fulfillment of man's capacities. Satisfaction, self-realiza- 
tion, full freedom then cannot be had in the sphere of mere secu- 
lar morality at its best. 

What solution then can there be of this perpetual discord in 
man's nature, of the infinite within him trying to satisfy itself 
with the finite ? What are the historical forms of a super-moral 
fulfillment of man's capacities? Art, religion and philosophy 
are the three spheres in which the contradiction passes in music 

^ Kanf s classical assertion, "Nothing in the world, or even outside of 
it, can possibly be regarded as absolutely good, but a good will," is soon 
followed by the acknowledgment that no instance of such a purely moral 
good will is to be found. Cf. Metaphysic of Ethics, sections I and II. 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 41 

out of sight. Here we are concerned only with reHgion as most 
immediately and generally the form of the solution of the dis- 
cord. We need not debate the question, as to the historical 
priority of morality or religion. We are concerned with the 
dialectical transition of unfulfilled morality into religion as the 
fulfillment of that yearning for perfection that is always an 
''ought to be" instead of an ''is" in man's experience. 

When we speak of duties towards God, we have really 
passed beyond the sphere of morality as such. But in the ful- 
fillment of these duties towards God we have not passed beyond 
the sphere of self-rfealization or freedom. Nor, indeed, have we 
passed out of the sphere of morality — even of secular morality — 
except in a way that makes return to it with renewed power of 
fulfillment. Religion, like art and philosophy, ofifers itself as 
a state of consciousness where the "ought to be" is. It gives 
fruition for struggle. For the constant failure of practical life 
and for the transient transcendence of art, it offers conviction of 
assured temporary and final fulfillment. The ideal of morality 
is only progressively fulfilled, and the strongest human spirit 
faints and fails in the struggle. 

The ideal of religion is realized here and now. The com- 
plete surrender of the will to God, or God's full grace to man, so 
that at-one-ment is an accomplished fact in the consciousness, 
is the very essence of all religions. The sense of dependence 
upon God becomes the sense of independence in God. It is no 
longer I, — the poor imperfect finite, that live, but God that 
liveth in me. I am emptied of self and yet fulfilled with His 
fullness. I am ''complete in Him." Religion, psyschologically 
and historically, like morality, is founded upon, and springs out 
of, the discord between the "ought to be" and the "is." In re- 
ligious language this discord is called sinfulness, which the 
Westminster Catechism defines as "want of conformity unto or 
transgression of the law of God." Religion heals this schism 
between the sinner and his God. The atonement is the one 
word that expresses the at-one-ment between God and man 



42 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

wrought in the reHgious consciousness, and ''peace, perfect 
peace" is given for the ''peace-less peace below" of mere moral- 
ity. 

For the reHgious man's consciousness, there is a perfectly 
realized form of tiie good. God is perfect and God is real — the 
Ens realissimum, whereas we found in morality no such form 
of authority — only passing shadows of fitful ideals that, alone, 
lead to despair. And, on the other hand, the good-will is good, 
through God's grace. Such is the ideal of religion. It tran- 
scends and fulfills morality. This is done absolutely for the re- 
ligious man in the atonement wrought by Christ, and in the Holy 
Communion, as the actual conscious realizing of this atonement. 
Moreover it is also done progressively in his secular life, with 
an assured conviction that the temporal progress is to have an 
eternal fulfillment. It is done symbolically and sacramentally 
in the Eucharist. Religion offers a present beatitude and the 
assurance of a final beatitude. Between these two beatitudes 
lies the realm of man in the secular — the practical task morality. 
But even this is transformed into religious morality. Progress 
becomes progress within the perfect. Our life is hid with 
Christ in God, and our faith counted to us for righteousness. 
We are complete in Him. Our life on earth goes on in the ways 
of morality, but with the assurance of final victory — of complete 
practical fulfillment — perfect freedom. 

We may have mere morality, and very high and noble forms 
of it, for a while, without religion, but we cannot have real re- 
ligion without morality. But in religion, morality is transfused 
and energized with the conviction that one man and God are 
always a majority. It is morality transformed into personal re- 
lationship with the Divine, in all the mediatorial functions of the 
moral organisms of which we are members here on earth. 
Morality becomes the doing of God's will on earth, as that will 
is expressed in all the moral institutions of mankind. The ex- 
pulsive power of a new affection, helps in the conflict against 
non-conformity. It is the eternal corporate life in the souls of 



THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 43 

believers that is at work, conforming them to the type to which 
they have been ''predestinated to be conformed." 

Thus real religion transforms and fulfills morality. The 
dialectic of morality impels us to religion — to the standpoint of 
conformity to God's will, in whatever way manifested, so that 
"God's service is perfect freedom. 

But religion in the heart of man, is in the heart of a man in 
time and space relations — of man on earth. Hence this felt 
oneness with God comes through earthly mediations. It is by 
means of this, that and the other mediation that God's grace 
works the atonement — the sense of the discord and schism 
healed. God w^as and is in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
Himself. The sensuous Christ is no more on earth. Yet 
Christians believe in the real presence. The sensuous media- 
tion for this real presence of Christ in the heart of the believer is 
that of worship, or to use the technical term. Cult, It is that 
which cultivates, nourishes, renews and strengthens the sense 
of at-one-ment with God. Worship is a giving and a receiving, 
a giving up of the imperfect, sinful self, and a receiving of God. 
It is "God and the soul and the soul and God at one." Self- 
surrender and divine grace are the elements that make worship 
the form of the realization of the specifically religious con- 
sciousness. Thus the Cult is the central fountain of the re- 
ligious consciousness of perfect peace and fulfillment — the Sab- 
bath of the Spirit that is to abide through the week days ; the 
"vision splendid" by which the religious man "is on his way at- 
tended." 

It is indeed absolutely esential that in some way the perpetual 
presence of the empirically absent Perfect be mediated to those 
who are to be reconciled and filled with all the fullness of God. 
Hence, for Christians, the Holy Communion has been the central 
and chief act of worship — the chief means for realizing the real 
presence of a bodily absent Lord. The Church which does not 
make much of worship, does not make men very religious. It 
does not realize the religious ideal. It may run off into the in- 



44 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

tellectualism of orthodoxy or of heterodoxy. It may emphasize 
the practical side — drift into a species of theological pragma- 
tism, or flourish for awhile as an "institutional Church.'' It 
may flourish for a time, living a galvanized life, on the decaying 
forces of a previous religious life. It may ''go about doing 
good'' in a purely humanitarian way, but, without the constant 
nourishing and cherishing of the specifically religious conscious- 
ness ; without making worship its central function and the cen- 
tral act of worship the central function, it will drift into the 
realm of mere ethics or run off into some species of ecclesiastical 
quackery. 

If religion is to transcend and fulfill morality, then let us 
have religion. Let us have the specific religious consciousness, 
and let us use the specific means thereto. Reflection and expe- 
rience force us out of the morality of ''the good will," or duty 
for duty's sake, and out of that of mere conventional morality. 
We can only, with a good will, be conformed to the perfect. 
And we can be conformed to the perfect, only as we let the per- 
fect have its transforming work in us. In the bona iide 
religious experience this transformation is wrought in our con- 
sciousness. It is thus only in the religious experience of man 
that conformity to type means real freedom, and that authority 
and freedom cease to be an antinomy. At-one-with God, His 
service becomes man's perfect freedom. 



flD «oIi, fcD|)o art t|)e author of peace anti lober of comorUt in finotol* 
(Use of toi^om i9tantiet|) out eternal life^ \xs^n%z jaierbice isi perfect 
freetiom} HefenH uief t|bp \^\xmh\z 0erbantj» in all ajsjsaultiei of our 
enemiejs; t|)at toe, jjurefe trujssting in t|)p nefence, map not fear t|)e 
potoet of mt aUDeriasarieiSt t|)rous|) t|)e mi0|)t of iJfeisujS (E^^riist our 
ILorH^ amen^ > 



' This is the collect that Bossuet declared to be the most complete statement of 
human experience to be found. 



CHAPTER II 

SABATIER, HARNACK, AND LOISY 

''God's service is perfect freedom/' Yes! But what is 
His service? What are the forms, intellectual, ethical and re- 
ligious in which His will is definitely stated? If I am only free 
when I am fulfilling my function as a member of His kingdom, 
then what is His kingdom, and what is man's specific function 
as a member of that kingdom ? Concrete freedom is the high- 
est and fullest possible exercise of all man's faculties. God's 
kingdom on earth must be comprehensive enough to offer right 
ways of thinking and right ways of doing, as well as right ways 
of worshiping. It must be the sphere for the cultivation of the 
whole man — the development of all his faculties. If the use of 
all his faculties is the service of freedom then the old saying of 
the monks is true — lahorare est orare — ^to work is to worship — 
to work with brain or brawn is a form of self-realization. Then 
too Hegel's saying is true: Das Denken ist auch wahrer 
Gottesdienst — thinking is also genuine worship. Thus all nor- 
mal laws of conduct and of thought are laws of God for man's 
development. The syllogism first formulated by Aristotle, as 
well as the Decalogue formulated by Moses, is a form of the Di- 
vine Logic. Then too the laws of good living as discovered by 
modern science are God's laws. In a word, whenever human 
science discovers laws and principles man is reading God's 
thoughts after Him — His kingdom is over all. His good-will 
towards man is manifested in the principles of every sphere of 
man's activity. These principles are everywhere the forms of 
divine service and of man's freedom. The revelation of these 
principles — man's discovery of them, is progressive, and man's 

45 



46 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

progress into freedom is in his loyalty to the fullest and highest 
revelation of them. He is intellectually free when he thinks 
according to the laws of thought in the highest form — when his 
science is scientific and his theology is philosophical. He is 
morally free when his conduct conforms to the highest concep- 
tions of the principles that make for the well-being of mankind. 
He is religiously free when worshiping God according to the 
dictates of the highest form of religion. Whoso would be a 
man must be a conformist, not to the dictates of his own private, 
peculiar way of thinking and acting and worshiping, but to rela- 
tively normal and catholic dictates of the wisest and best. Who 
does otherwise sins against his own real freedom, even though 
following the dictates of his own conscience and mind and 
heart. There are always relatively orthodox and catholic forms 
of thought and conduct as well as of worship, conformity to 
which is educative of the fullest activity and self-realization of 
all of man's functions. Non-conformity dwarfs his develop- 
ment besides landing him, ofttimes, in the insane asylum and 
prison. The whole educational function of the state has, as its 
object, the training of its citizens in common forms of thought, . 
knowledge and conduct. The whole educational side of science 
seeks to lead all men to have a common knowledge of its prin- 
ciples, and results to the end that they may apply them in the 
useful arts. The whole trend of the intellectual and ethical 
spheres is away from private, peculiar, subjective, capricious 
forms. It is seen that what is wanted for the well-being of the 
nation is not a lot of intellectual and moral cranks or abnormal- 
ities, but a band of citizens with a common language and sci- 
ence and with good manners or morals. Common principles 
and laws are fundamental, and conformity to them makes the 
free citizens of a good kingdom or republic. 

''The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sab- 
bath." Every law is primarily made for the well being of man. 
It is man's right as well as his duty to conform to the laws and 
principles, so far as discovered, of every sphere of his activity. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 47 

It is a service that frees, because it develops him. It is a form of 
that service which is perfect freedom, so far as the intellectual 
and moral spheres are not outside of God's kingdom — an athe- 
istic conceit harbored by few. 

The welfare of the state depends upon this common culture 
of its citizens. May we not go farther and say that the welfare 
of the state»also depends upon the religion of its people ? Surely 
history teaches this lesson. Psychologically man is by nature 
a religious being — incurably so. Historically this is true, and 
moreover it is true that the disposition or spirit of a people has 
always been largely formed by its religion. And the disposition 
of a people begets that loyalty which is the stanchest support 
of the state and its civilizing institutions. And yet to-day, we 
find that it is chiefly in the religious sphere that authority and 
conformity are supposed to be inconsistent with freedom. It 
may be well for the state to guarantee religious liberty, but this 
only means that it prescribes no form of religion for its citizens. 
It does not mean that they can be good citizens without con- 
formity to some form ©f religion. The state guarantees its cit- 
zens the right to choose their own form of worshiping God. But 
no state can safely guarantee all its citizens the right to be irre- 
ligious. And no historical form of religion ever did or ever can 
guarantee its members individual license of non-conformity at 
pleasure. And yet we find both friends and enemies of religion 
crying out to-day against all authority in religion as inconsistent 
with spiritual religion. Let us then carry this question of au- 
thority and conformity and freedom into the religious realm. 

We may do this by a reference to the two most notable 
volumes on religion that have very recently been published in 
France. The first one is that of Auguste Sabatier^ which has 
been translated into English under the title of Religions of Au- 
thority and the Religion of the Spirit. 

The second^ is that of Alfred Loisy, U^vangile et UEglise, 

* Les Religions d'autorite et la Religion de V esprit. 
^U Evangile et U glise, Deuxieme edition, 1903. 



48 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Of this there has not been a translation made though doubtless 
the mere fact of its having been placed upon the Index Li- 
brorum Prohibitorum will guarantee a speedy rendering of it 
into English^. Apart from this fact it certainly deserves to be 
translated for its own merits. 

Both of these volumes are written in defense of Christianity : 
Sabatier's for a minimized form of subjective religion in the 
soul of the individual, and Loisy's for a maximized form of ob- 
jective, institutional or ecclesiastical religion. Both are con- 
scious of the struggle of Christianity with the new learning. 
Both of them are fully abreast with modern culture — children 
of the twentieth century — accepting even more than the assured 
results of modern science, and of Biblical and historical criti- 
cism. Both of them find it to be ^'a psychological necessity for 
each believer to bring his inner religious consciousness into har- 
mony with his general culture" — the religious consciousness of 
the one being that of a Unitarian and the other that of a Roman 
Catholic. Both are alike in using the historical method in their 
study of the origins and transformations of Christianity. 
Finally both are Kantian agnostics, denying the possibility of 
knowledge in the realm of religion. Sabatier says : ''Scientific 
certitude has as its basis intellectual evidence. Religious certi- 
tude has for its foundation the feeling of subjective life or moral 
evidence."^ 

Loisy's foundation is also of faith and not of knozvledge. 
But with him it is not the faith in the heart of the individual, 
but the social, corporate faith of the religious community, which 
is authoritative for the individual's belief. But both alike dis- 
claim any human capacity for intellectual knowledge of religious 
beliefs. Both too are alike in finding a very exiguous remnant 
of historical data in the New Testament. Here all likeness 

* Since writing this chapter there has been a translation of the work 
published by Charles Scribner's Sons. 

^ Sabatier's Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, p. 312. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 49 

ceases, and we find two antipodal views of what Christianity is, 
that is to be defended. 

Loisy defends what Sabatier rejects. The title of Sabatier's 
volume is a dogmatic denial of spirituality to any religion of 
authority. He claims that authority poisons religion, while 
Loisy holds that authority promotes it. Sabatier stands for sub- 
jective individualism in religion ; Loisy for the social form of 
religion as educative of the individual. It is any authority no 
religion versus no authority no religion. Loisy defends the 
historical Qiristianity of the Church of Rome, Sabatier defends 
the religion that never had, and never can take, authoritative 
institutional form. 

Both trace in identical terms the historical transformations 
of Christianity, but give most diverse interpretations of these 
changes. Sabatier interprets them as lapses from Christianity, 
Loisy as developments of it. Sabatier faults the Christianity of 
all the churches, Loisy defends ecclesiastical Christianity in its 
most pronounced form. Sabatier denies that Christianity is 
what it has become, Loisy identifies it with what it has become in 
the Roman form. The one seeks the kernel without the husk, 
the soul without the body, the essence without its form; the 
other comes perilously near identifying the kernel with the 
husk, the spirit with the letter. The one stands for non- 
conformity, the other for conformity in religion. The one 
stands for freedom from authority, the other for authority with 
scant measure of real freedom. Neither of them appreciates 
the concrete freedom of authority. 

In 1897 Professor Sabatier, then Dean of the Faculty of 
Protestant Theology in the University of Paris, published a 
volume on The Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, which 
was hailed as an epoch-making book. In fact, it covers nearly 
the same ground and exhibits the same principles as his last 
volume — ^though in the latter his total break with any form of 
historical Christianity is more pronounced. He gives up wholly 
the evangelical form of Christianity of which he was formerly 

/I 



50 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

a strenuous defender. He gives up miracles, creeds and cult — 
every phase of historical Christianity that science, history and 
criticism object to, as belonging to the false form of authorita- 
tive religion. Still he is religious, or has "the religion of the 
spirit.'' The volume is entitled ^^Outlines of a Philosophy of 
Religion, based on Psychology and History/^ We find that he 
bases it only on psychology, and, in both volumes, declines to 
base it on history. "Why am I religious?" he asks. His 
answer is "because I cannot help it and, moreover, humanity is 
not less incurably religious than I am." In a review of this 
first volume of Sabatier I said :^ 

"The whole volume partakes of the nature of a personal con- 
fession." His sympathy with perplexed souls is intense. He 
himself has passed over the whole via dolorosa of honest, anxious 
doubters. What he has to say is not mere theory. It is 
spiritual experience. Hence the captivating v/armth and con- 
viction that gives tone to every page of the volume 

The tone of this volume of an octogenarian has all the vigor 
and inspiration and dauntless faith of a victorious leader in the 
prime of life. He sinks into devout meditation, and anon rises 
into the victorious acclaim of apostrophe. He has all the bril- 
liancy and clearness of style that characterize French authors. 
And he has that which does not always characterize them — a 
warm, loving, and devout heart. He writes, confessedly, as a 
pectoralist. It is because of this that he fails to give us a 
Philosophy of Religion, as I shall note in speaking of the latter 
part of his work. For when he comes to his theory of 
knowledge he is confessedly a Kantianer — denying the possi- 
bility of knowledge in the realms of ethics and religion. The 
solution he gives is, as he says, a practical, and not a theoretical 
one, and, therefore (I should say), not a philosophical one. He 
says ^Scientific certitude has as its basis intellectual evidence. 
Religious certitude has for its foundation the feeling of sub- 

^ The Protestant Episcopal Review, October, 1899. 



SABATIER/HARNACK AND LOISY 51 

jective life, or moral evidence/^ He proclaims an irreducible 
dualism between knowledge and faith, while asserting validity 
of our confidence in the deliverances of them both. 

It is the confession of one who is a Christian at heart — 
the result of his nurture and education in the Evangelical 
Church, though now a pagan in head. His first volume found a 
large sympathetic public. It warmed and quickened the re- 
ligious life of many, enveloped in the pessimism coming from a 
belief that their modern culture doomed their religion. As I 
have further said ''he regards religion as the psychological 
optimism of the soul in face of all the facts that make for 
pessimism." It is a practical, not a theoretical, answer of the 
soul to all evils. ''It is a life-impulse that rests upon feeling" 
— ^the feeling .of dependence which every man experiences in 
respect to universal being. To be religious is to accept with 
humility and confidence' our dependence upon universal spirit. 
This, of .course, w^e recognize as Schleiermacher's view, with 
more emphasis on the element of confidence. 'Religion is a 
commerce — a conscious and willed relation into which the soul, 
in distress, enters with the mysterious power on which it feels 
that itself and its destiny depends.' It is the prayer of the 
heart. 'Prayer is religion in act, i. e,, real religion.' In an 
appendix, however, he gives a more radical source of religion 
than that of human distress. He finds in 'his conscience the 
mysterious and real co-existence of God. It is this mystery out 
of which religion springs by an invincible necessity.' Quoting 
from M. Charles Secretan, he says: 'In me lives some one 
greater than me.' In fact, it is this concept of the divine im- 
manence that he uses throughout his chapters on Revelation, 
Miracle and Inspiration, where he makes sharp criticism of 
these doctrines when formulated from the view point of the 
divine transcendence. 'Religion is simply the subjective revela- 
tion of God in man, and revelation is religion objective In God.' 
Revelation is as universal as religion itself. No religion is ab- 



52 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

solutely false or devoid of revelation. Revelation is not a com- 
munication of ultimate, immutable dogmas, but a divine inspira- 
tion, evolving through the generations of mankind till it comes 
to its full fruition in the soul of Christ. The dogmatic notion 
of revelation is pagan. In its scholastic form, it is irreligious 
and anti-psychological. Psychologically, revelation must be 
interior, because God has no external form. It must be self- 
evident, self-authenticating. The only sufficient and infallible 
criterion of revelation is the psychological conviction of its fit- 
ness and power to enter as a permanent and constituent element 
into the woof of one's inner life, to enrich, enfranchise and 
transform it into a higher life. In the soul of Jesus comes the 
supreme revelation of God — the revelation of the divine Father- 
hood in his own filial consciousness. This conscious, absolute 
relation to God is the heart of the dogma of the God-man. 
From his criticism of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we dis- 
cover again his lack of appreciation of the intellectual element 
of the Christian faith — a minimizing it to a degree that is 
extremely unphilosophical. There is little or nothing said of 
the Christian doctrine of sin and of Christ's relation to mankind 
as the Saviour. It is in the religious consciousness of Jesus that 
he finds the essence and principle of Christianity. The essential 
element in Christ's consciousness was the feeling of his filial re- 
lation to God, and God's paternal relation to himself. This 
feeling, filial in regard to God, fraternal in regard to man, is that 
which makes a man to be a Christian. Thus he considers Chris- 
tianity not as a new doctrine, but a new positive force, springing 
from the new relation realized between the soul of man and his 
Father — God. A man is a Christian just to the degree in which 
he experiences the same filial piety that Jesus felt, or as he has 
the religious consciousness that Jesus had. There is no attempt 
to construct a scheme of salvation ; no doctrine of the way in 
which the religion of Jesus is re-enacted in each believing disci- 
ple. At most, we are left to surmise that it is purely by word^ 
influence and example. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 53 

Then follows a brilliant exposition of the three great his- 
torical forms of Christianity — the Jewish, Catholic and Prot- 
estant. Christianity exists to-day in the two forms of 
Romanism and Protestantism. The Christian seed is never 
sown in a neutral and empty soil. No soul and no social state is 
ever a tabula rasa. Hence the corruptions of the Christian 
principle. Coming into the culture and ideas and life of the 
Graeco-Roman empire, it necessarily was modified — corrupted 
by its environment. The doctrine, polity and ritual of the 
Roman Church was as much Pagan as Christian. Romanism 
objectified and materialized the Christian principle into a visi- 
ble institution, deifying the Church. The author shows but 
little appreciation of the vast and deep work done by the Roman 
Church in evangelizing the world. In fact, he throughout 
minimizes the importance of doctrine and organization — i, e., 
of the churchly side of Christianity, without which, however, 
it is truer to hold that it would have passed, in the dark ages, as 
a dream in the night. 

But such was not the mind of the founder of Christianity, 
and such has not been its historical course. The visible Church 
has been the extension of the incarnation in the secular life of 
humanity, gradually realizing the kingdom of God on earth. 
At the close of his criticism of Romanism he allows that there 
was always latent in it some of the power of the Christian prin- 
ciple. ^'Protestantism/' he says, ''sprang out of Catholicism 
because it was virtually contained in it/' radical though the op- 
position is between the two. Protestantism brings back Chris- 
tianity from the exterior to the interior. Christianity again 
becomes a principle of subjective inspiration. But, he says, 
there lurks a germ of Romanism in Protestantism. This is seen 
when Protestant churches set up certain confessions of faith as 
infallible, ultimate statements of Christianity. Protestantism 
is not doctrine, nor is it a church, nor can it be imprisoned in any 
definite form. It is a new assertion of the immanent divine life 
in the soul. The filial sense of God's immediate active presence 



54 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

in the heart is the essence of Protestantism, as it was the essence 
of the reHgion of Jesus. In all this, it is but fair to say that he 
is presenting his ideal of what Protestantism ought to be, rather 
than Protestantism as it has been and is, historically. Most 
Protestants will demur to his ideal ; and most Romanists have a 
right to object to his presenting rather the imperfections of an 
actually existing church than the ideal principle that is working 
in and through that form of Christianity. 

Again, most Protestants will demur to much that he says 
in Book III on the nature and function of dogma. Of the three 
elements in dogma — the religious, the intellectual, and the 
authoritative — only the first is of continuous worth and validity. 
Only an infallible Church can set up immutable dogmas. Prot- 
estantism falls into a radical contradiction with its own principle 
when it attempts this. And yet dogma is necessary, because it 
is the natural expression of life. But life is ever changing, 
hence dogma is even mutable. It is essential to religion, but its 
office IS pedagogic. It belongs not in the intellectual but in the 
practical sphere. It is the religious element in dogma that is 
valuable. The intellectual form is a mere symbol to awaken 
and nourish the divine life. It must never be taken as a state- 
ment of accurate, intellectual knowledge. For an objective 
knowledge of divine, spiritual facts is impossible. It is the 
error of orthodoxy to make dogmas the essence of Christianity. 
This error of orthodoxy is essentially rationalistic — a belief that 
we can have intellectual knowledge of spiritual realities. But 
our author is persistently and heartily a pectoralist rather than 
an intellectualist. He does not believe with Hegel that thinking 
is also a true religious act, nor that we can ever adequately think 
our religion, or have what is known as a Philosophy of Religion. 

And this brings me to again notice briefly his really agnos- 
tic view as to knowledge. He accepts Kant's dualism between 
the intellectual and moral natures of man. Our faculty of cog- 
nition is limited to the sensuous world. We have no intellectual 
organ for knowing the metaphysical, the spiritual, the real. In- 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 55 

tellectual knowledge or science is, he affirms, opposed to the dic- 
tates of the heart and conscience. It can recognize personaHty 
neither in man, nor in the principle of the universe. But heart 
and consciene cry out against this dictum of knowledge. The 
solution cannot be an intellectual one. It must be the practical 
one of the spirit's own assertion of the reality and worth of per- 
sonality. This is made not by the intellect, but by the heart and 
conscience. 

The sovereignty of personality — ^human and divine — is the 
answer of the heart given by religion — constituting religion. 

The author affirms* that we thus have two orders of con- 
viction: first, the objective intellectual one of science; second, 
the subjective pectoral one of heart and conscience. These two 
are irreducible. Religion and morality are not reconciled with 
science, nor science with religion and morality. But as science 
is based on confidence of mind in itself, so religion is based on 
confidence of heart in itself. The legitimacy of the confidence 
of the one is as good as that of the other.^ These two orders of 
conviction must never be confounded. Their results will 
always remain heterogeneous. Religious and moral truth are 
known, he says, by a subjective act of what Pascal calls the 
heart. The intellect can know nothing about them, any more 
than the heart can about the truths of science. 'Science is not 
more sure of its object than moral or religious faith is of its 
own. But it is sure in a different way. Scientific certitude has 
at its basis intellectual evidence. Religious certitude has for its 
foundation the feeling of subjective life, or moral evidence. 
The one satisfies the intellect, the other the soul. In religious 
knowledge the intellectual demonstration has no value beyond 
its use to nurture the soul.'^ Demonstrations of the existence 
of the soul and God are ineffective to those who have no piety ; 
for those who have, they are superfluous and impossible. Thus 
he makes a clear and frank confession of agnosticism in regard 

* P. 300. 
"P. 312. 



56 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

to religion and ethics, and resolutely discards the ^philosophy of 
logical unity.'^ This logically salto mortale is religiously a salto 
vitale to God. The subjective mind — the heart — affirms what 
the mind — the intellect — denies. It is an act of trust, not an in- 
tellectual demonstration, that asserts the sovereignty of the 
human spirit resting in the divine spirit. We agree with all 
that he says as to the peculiarly pectoral character of religion, 
only faulting his Kantian epistemology, which makes it impos- 
sible for the intellect to have knowledge of divine things. Man 
is a being who thinks all his experience, and perforce must think 
his religious experience. Thought can make the ascent to the 
Divine. Rational knowledge of the pectoral religious is pos- 
sible and necessary. The real is the rational. Religious expe- 
rience is real, and it is an imperative upon the mind to see its 
rationality. 

In criticising the standpoint of Sabatier we may include 
Harnack^ and the whole Ritschlian school. Harnack is perhaps 
the most radical of Ritschlians. It would be as presumptuous, as 
it would tedious, to state the various conservative views within 
the whole school. It would be folly not to recognize the positive 
results of the school in creating a revival of the religious life. 
But all this must be neglected and only the fundamental prin- 
ciples be noted. The school as a whole is devoutly religious. 
It represents a wholesome recall from mere intellectualism in 
religion to the specifically religious life. But when it proceeds 
to give grounds for religious certitude it opens the way for an 
estimation of the validity of these grounds. Like Sabatier, the 
whole school adopts the Kantian standpoint of intellectual 
agnosticism in the realm of religion. We cannot know God or 
the soul. We cannot know that Jesus is divine. Knowledge is 
out of the question and always fails when it is attempted, as 
the history of Christian doctrine shows. This intellectual 

^P.314. 

^Harnack's What is Christianity, translation of his Das Wcsen des 
Christ entums. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 57 

nescience is supplemented by a religious Pragmatism} Doc- 
trines are true only so far as they are of worth to us. All 
"helping ideas" have corresponding realities. The idea of God 
is 'a helping idea."' God is real for the heart, not for the mind. 
That is, in religious matters they make ''judgments of value" 
take the place of judgments of existence in the realm of knowl- 
edge and then turn round and say that judgments of worth 
(Werturteile) certify reality to us. They agree, then, with 
Sabatier in an appeal from intelligence to some other form of 
experience for certitude in religious experience. They agree, 
too, with him in decrying authority in doctrine and cult, and in 
falling back to the standpoint of immediacy of feeling in the 
soul of the individual. As Harnack says : 'Tt is God and the 
soul and the soul and God that is the whole religion." They 
agree too with him in his cry, back from the Christianity of 
Creed and Church to the personal religion of Jesus of Nazareth 
that, by contagious sentiment, we may have the same sense of 
filial relation with God that he had. That alone is true religion. 

Professor Harnack, doubtless, represents the most radical 
form of Ritschlianism — his brilliant historical scholarship lead- 
ing further along the same anti-ecclesiastical line of the whole 
school. 

His volume created the same furore in Germany that 
Sabatier's did in France. In fact both of them have found a 
large reading in England and America also. Harnack's volume 
lacks some of the personal interest and religious warmth of 
Sabatier's. But it is just as brilliant and attractive. It con- 
sists of sixteen lectures given before a large University audience 
in Berlin in 1899- 1900. The wonderful interest excited by both 
these books serves to show what a large part of cultivated people 
are still deeply interested in religion. What is Christianity? 
What is the abiding essence (Wesen) of the Christian religion? 
Is it not something that may still be ours, in spite of the down- 

^ Cf. Appendix, note 7. 



58 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

fall of church and creed and cult before the bar of modern cul- 
ture ? Such are the questions of Harnack as well as Sabatier. 

When we think of it, it does seem like a strangely belated 
inquiry to ask what Christianity is, after its nineteen centuries 
of vigorous, world-wide existence. But it is not so strange 
when we remember that for these authors and for a very large 
portion of cultivated people, historical Christianity is an intel- 
lectually discredited religion. But as mankind is incurably 
religious, the leaders must either invent a new religion or reform 
the old one. The attempt must now be made to find an inmost 
abiding kernel, after all the husks of historical Christianity have 
been torn away. They are religious. They want to be Chris- 
tians — all their religious life has been nurtured in Christianity, 
and they are loth to give it up. Hence their earnest endeavor to 
find a way of faith in the midst of their shipwreck of belief. 
They are Christian mystics, afflicted with all the ailments pe- 
culiar to modern culture, and yet they turn to Jesus — hero- 
worshipers in spite of the marring of his divinely human face 
by the Christian Church. They will be Christians in spite of 
the Church. They will form an ecclesiola in ecclesia, a 
"righteous remnant" of those who have ''the religion of the 
spirit," freed from the incredulous superstitions of any form of 
a ''religion of authority." 

A brief sketch of some of the views of Sabatier's last 
volume and of Professor Harnack's lectures may well precede a 
criticism of their fundamental principles. We have already 
stated the views of Sabatier's first volume. He devotes two- 
thirds of his second volume to the most drastic criticism of all 
forms of historical Christianity as being forms of "religions of 
authority," irreconcilable with "the religion of the spirit." We 
may omit his criticism of the Roman Catholic form, as it is 
practically identical with that of Harnack, which we shall give 
further on. Having torn the rags from Romanism and ex- 
hibited an unspirltual skeleton, he turns his criticism upon the 
authoritative forms of Protestantism. The Pope of Rome is 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 59 

shorn of his illegitimate authority. And now ''the paper pope 
of Protestants'' — the Bible — must be deposed from the position 
of authority accredited to it by Bibliolaters. He affirms that 
Protestants have never been true to their principles. He 
defines the Reformation as a revolt from all externalism and 
authority in religion, based upon the inward subjective expe- 
rience — the witness of the spirit, the confidence of the child in 
the Heavenly Father's love. The ultimate Protestant principle 
is that of the autonomy of the Christian conscience. But ''the 
Catholic principle survived in the Protestant churches. Not 
only was the dogmatic tradition of the councils and Middle 
Ages maintained, but no one entertained a doubt that an infal- 
lible external authority was necessary. The attempt was made 
to constitute it by the dogma of the infallibility of the Scriptures 
and on this foundation to build up an authoritative theology."^ 
He holds that the moment Protestants framed an authoritative 
theology and church, they departed from their true principle 
that the Bible is to be interpreted by the individual reason and 
conscience. But, in fact, this was the view only of the Ana- 
baptist sects. After tracing the rise of authority in the Protes- 
tant churches, he compares it most unfavorably with the Catholic 
form of authority — both systems belonging to the same family. 
*'The Protestants were led to establish the infallibility of Scrip- 
tures along the same path by which the Catholics established 
that of the Church."^ "From whatever point of view we exam- 
ine the two systems, the advantage is incontestably on the 
Catholic side."^ The first rests on a political, the second on a 
literary fiction. "Both are the fruit of an exaggerated and mis- 
understood craving for authority/' And authority in religion is 
always an impertinence. Then follows his description of the 
dissolution of the Protestant authority, through the progress of 
Biblical criticism and the historical method. "The Protestant 

^P. 154 
'P. 185. 
'P. 186. 



6o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

system of authority has broken down forever" while the 
CathoHc system has estabHshed and completed itself by the 
Vatican decree — ''one of the grandest political spectacles extend- 
ing its rule over more than one-third of Christendom." Hence 
in their final struggle ''there is no other choice for Protestants 
but either to turn back again to the Roman Catholic Church 
whence they once came out, or to rise joyously and vigorously 
from the religion of the letter to the religion of the spirit."^ 
Both these forms of authoritative religion — the pagan and the 
Jewish periods of Christianity are now broken and "the truly 
Christian period is about to begin. The religion of the priest- 
hood and the religion of the letter are outworn and dying before 
our eyes, making way for the religion of the Spirit."^ It is like 
a captive bird that may tremble as it sees its cage falling to 
pieces around it. But it is now singing over the fragments, con- 
scious of its wings, and of liberty to use them. The third part 
of the volume is devoted to this "new religion" of the Spirit, 
which he characterizes as "the religious relation realized in pure 
spirituality." And this is only the primitive gospel in its reality. 
For the gospel in its very principle implied the abrogation of re- 
ligions of authority.^ The heart of the gospel is the conscious- 
ness of a filial relation between child and father. To be a 
Christian is to live over within ourselves, the inner spiritual life 
of Christ — to feel the presence of a Father, and the reality of our 
filial relation to Him just as Christ felt this in himself. Jesus 
is only the soul of the race in whom this consciousness of filial 
relation to the Father first came to full realization. And the 
spirit of divine sonship, learned from Jesus, is the essence of the 
religion of the spirit. "Jesus liberated his disciples' consciences 
equally with his own/' He claimed no authority over them. 
His authority is only that of the revelation of the Father. Jesus 
taught no dogmas, but a new religious sentiment was aroused 

' P. 253. 
* P. 281. 
'P. 282. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 6i 

by his life among men. ''There was a contagious sentiment of 
an entirely new relation — a filial relation to God." 

''Jesusolatry, that is, the separate worship of the man Jesus, 
is, so far as the Christian religion is concerned, as truly idol- 
atry as the adoration of the virgin and the saints. It is as re- 
pugnant to Protestant piety, in its deep instinctive tendency, as 
to the primitive gospel. Jesus never claimed worship for him- 
self."^ He discusses and thus dismisses the authority of Jesus 
as it has been held by Catholics and Protestants alike. In fine, 
as he would make every religious man his own Moses, so would 
he make him his own Jesus. We are Christians just so far as 
we reproduce his personal piety in us. ''But," he asks, "does 
not the person of Jesus occupy a central place in his gospel?" 
With some circumlocution he answers No! "The orthodox 

doctrine of the Divinity of Christ distorts the true gospel 

In the dogma of the Trinity there is a root of paganism."^ All 
such doctrines are "positively outside of Christianity and out- 
side of the gospel of salvation. Jesus never demanded such 
adoration from his disciples." "Jesus simply tried to modify 
and renew the religious consciousness of his disciples by impart- 
ing to them the purely religious and moral content of his own 
consciousness."^ Yet on a previous page he speaks of the sense 
of sin and says that the simple and profound story of the 
prodigal son is the whole gospel. He speaks of all conceptions 
of the Divinity of Christ as "pagan imaginings, more worthy of 
worshipers on Olympus than of those on Tabor." The re- 
ligion of the spirit has to guard itself against paganism {i. e., 
sacramentalism) by critical symbolism, and against the Jewish 
error (of orthodoxy) by iideism. "The religion of the spirit 
(thus) embodies the living practical synthesis of critical sym- 
bolism and Meism."^ We need not even accept all the personal 

' P. 294. 
' P. 330. 
^P. 331. 
*P. 339. 



62 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

views of Jesus. The thing is to share his filial piety. I have 
referred to the warm personal enthusiasm that animates both of 
Sabatier's volumes, making them a sort of a confession of faith 
of a doubting and believing soul. His last paragraph is 
pathetic. Speaking of his love of philosophical reflection he 
says : '^There is something more urgent, more necessary than 
to explain the experiences of piety, and that is to make them. 
At the close of this long effort of research and meditation, the 
author is not exempt from a certain lassitude of mind and heart ; 
and he lays down the pen with the prayer of our old Corneille :" 

"O God of truth, whom only I desire, 
Bind me to thee by ties as strong as sweet ; 
I tire of hearing, of reading too I tire, 
But not of saying; Thee God alone I need." 

The pathos is heightened by the fact that he sought relief 
from the lassitude by a trip to Palestine, leaving the command 
that his book must be published, if anything happened to him 
on the journey. *T have work planned out for two hundred 
years," he said, and yet, worn out by his labors, he soon gently 
breathed away his life, while praying "Our Father who art in 
heaven" — a Christian at heart though neither a Catholic nor a 
Protestant in head. 

He calls his new view of Christianity, *^the Religion of 
the spirit," symbolo-Fideisme, Fideisme or faith-ism is the es- 
sence of Christianity. He defines this term to mean that ''Sal- 
vation is by faith, independently of belief." Symbolism desig- 
nates the merely parabolical or figurate character of all dogmas. 

Sabatier finds a sort of necessity for dogmas, but denies all 
elements of knowledge in them. Dogmas must cease to be 
dogmatic. They are only helpful symbols in a region where 
knowledge is impossible. They are at best but suggestive 
parables. *Tt would be an illusion to believe that a religious 
symbol represents God as He really is, and that its value de- 
pends on the exactness with which it represents Him. The true 
content of the symbol is entirely subjective." We cannot know 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 63 

God. Jesus himself did not know God. He used the term 
Father to symboHze the feeHng of his heart in relation to the 
Great Unknowable: Father is but an imaginative symbol. 
Dogmas are poetry, not science. 

His critical symbolism is the intellectual form that remains 
after his frank acceptance of Kantian agnosticism. He denies 
the possibility of knowledge in the realms of ethics and religion. 
''Scientific certitude has for its basis intellectual evidence. Re- 
ligious certitude has for its foundation the feeling of subjective 
life, or moral evidence." We cannot know God or spiritual 
experience. We can only express in symbols the feelings of 
our hearts. He uses Ritschl's distinction between judgments of 
existence and judgments of value (Werturteile). 

Our knowledge of God is only symbolical. It is a value- 
judgment as to our psychological experience. All that validates 
the religious experience of Jesus is the response it awakens in 
our heart. The intellect can know nothing about this any 
more than the heart can about the truth of science. Here all 
authority beyond that of the individual's feeling is outi of court. 
Institution and doctrine are impertinences — ^pagan and Jewish 
corruptions of the pure gospel. 

The two principles at the basis of Sabatier's view are, first, 
his intellectual agnosticism and second, his pectoralism — Pectus 
est quod Theologum facit. 

Apart from the warm, charming personal element and the 
brilliant, vivid and declamatory form, we have here the solution 
of a devoutly religious man's attempt to bring his * 'inner re- 
ligious consciousness into harmony with his general culture," in 
science, history and Biblical criticism. We should note that in 
his first volume^ he emphasizes the psychological side of religion 
and then uses the historical method to destroy the validity of all 
forms of institutional and doctrinal Christianity. Psycholog- 
ically also, religion must be purely interior as God has no 
external form. It- is the presence of God in the heart. Quid 
^ Preface, p. xv. 



64 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

interius Deo? he asks, and quotes M. Secretan, "In me lives 
some one greater than me/' Finally after his drastic treatment 
of concrete religion in institutional and dogmatic forms, we 
have left only this psychological feeling, the scanty residuum, 
which he terms *'the Religion of the Spirit," the kernel without 
the husk. Before noticing the unhistoricity of his view of re- 
ligion and criticising his standpoint, we wish to state briefly the 
similar standpoint and principles of the Ritschlian School. 
Details will be unnecessary. We can make a composite photo- 
graph of the views of Ritschl, Hermann, Kaftan, Bender, Har- 
nack and Paulsen. 

(i) The object of this school is to save religion from 
scepticism — ^to find a ground of certitude for religion, which will 
be independent and unassailable by all critical, scientific and 
philosophical theories. This certitude is an inward feeling, the 
impression which Christ makes upon the soul, that in him God is 
drawing nigh you. Much more stress is laid upon the personal 
influence of the historical Jesus by some of this school than is 
done by Sabatier. "We are compelled to say" (says Hermann), 
"that the existence of Jesus in our world is that fact through 
which God so touches us that He opens up intercourse with us." 
Jesus "finds us." Christianity is self-evidencing in the expe- 
rience of the Christian. Emphasis is laid upon the historical 
Jesus, though the presence of legendary and non-historical mat- 
ter in the gospels is freely admitted. Thus Harnack says there 
is no historical proof of the resurrection of Jesus. But allowing 
all legendary, mythical and unhistorical elements that criticism 
finds in the gospels, there is still left a historical Jesus who 
warms our hearts and wins our reverence and leads us to the 
Father. But it is the historical Jesus, not the Christ of the 
Church and dogma. What Jesus was before his birth, and 
where or what he is now, are matters beyond our experience. 
And Ritschlians build only on the immediate impression made 
on us by the historical Jesus. Practically they give us only the 
picture of Jesus of Nazareth, in place of an ever living and ever 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 65 

resent Christ. Their teaching excludes all metaphysical views 
IS to the nature and person of Christ as formulated in Christ- 
oiogy. Their cry is 'back to Jesus/' Away from the Christ 
of the church and the creeds, to the historical Jesus, and the 
positive experience which the gospel portrait makes upon the 
human soul. ''Theology without metaphysic" is the watchword 
of the school. The bane of dogmatic theology has been its meta- 
physical interpretation of the person of Jesus. This must all be 
given up because, 

(2) We have no organ for knowing the supra-sensuous. 
In philosophy they are agnostic. Intellectually they are Neo- 
Kantians — denying the possibility of theoretic knowledge of 
God and spiritual realities. Knowledge is confined to sensuous, 
time and space realities — the realm of science. It cannot deal 
with spiritual realities. Knowledge- judgments are out of their 
province in religious matters. How then can we have religious 
certitude, when all theoretic knowledge is denied ? 

(3) Here they modify Kant's Practical Reason to suit the 
religious rather than the moral sphere. 

Judgments of value or Worth judgments (Werturteile) 
are distinguished from judgments of existence as to sensuous 
reality made by the faculty of knowledge. I know the sun to 
be what physics and astronomy tell me that it is. But the sun 
warms me. It is good to be warm. I judge the sun to be 
good. So critical history gives me the historical phenomenon 
of Jesus. But my knowledge of the historical Jesus makes 
such an impression upon me, meets so many of my religious 
needs, that he is of the greatest value to me. I make the value- 
judgment that Jesus is divine. All religious knowledge is of a 
generically different order from knowledge properly so called. 
It is essentially faith rather than knowledge. It deals not with 
objective or existential truth, but with experiences which have 
value for us as religious beings. It belongs to the theoretic 
faculty to tell us just what the real historical person Jesus was. 
Bring this real Jesus before us and we feel that he is good, 

5 



(^ THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

divine, just as we feel that the sun is warm and good. We do 
not know that, objectively, Jesus is good and divine. The quali- 
ties we attribute to him are expressions of what he is to us, just 
as the brightness of the sun is, to use Locke's formula, only a 
secondary instead of a primary or objective property of the sun. 
So we believe in God as Father, not because we know Him 
as such, but because of a subjective, secondary quality, inherent 
in us, not in Him. We believe in Him because it is a ''helping 
idea," as they term it. It is good for us to believe in God as a 
Father, as Jesus did, because it helps us, as it helped him, to lead 
a beautiful spiritual life. If we said that we knew God, science 
would sweep the heavens to find him and then turn to us and 
say, I find no heavenly Father. Thus it is not really God the 
Father that helps us, or Christ that saves us. The historical 
Jesus is dead and buried, and God the Father cannot be found. 
But our faith in them are "helping ideas" whereby we save 
our own souls. It is not a living, present Christ that works the 
mystic process of redemption within us. But we find that by 
believing and acting as if the unknowable God were a Father, ^ 
as the dead Jesus did when he was alive, we are able to have a 
deeper and fuller religious life. We are not to accept this 
Fatherhood-of-God belief on the authority of Jesus. But we 
are to try the effect upon ourselves of believing it as he did. It 
is only in this sense that Jesus mediates to us this feeling of 
filial relation to God. It is merely a value- judgment when we 
affirm that the historic Jesus had the highest spiritual ex- 
perience. He now lives only as a memory, and affects us only as 
the memory of any other departed great soul affects us. The 
ever-living presence of Christ in the heart, or in the Eucharist, 
is set aside. Jesus lived and died and was buried. That is the 
historic Christ for Harnack and most of the Ritschlians. Our 
religious experience of filial relation to the unknowable God is 
only awakened and nurtured by our knowledge of this person 
of past history. This is the only mediation allowed. So that 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY (i^ 

after all their standpoint is practically the same as Sabatier's — 
f. e,y immediacy, pectoralism, subjectivity. 

Another point of similarity with Sabatier is the conception 
the school has of the kingdom of God. Suffice it to say that 
this is purely a spiritual kingdom. "The kingdom of God is 
TJuiMn you/' is the one misinterpreted text on which they found 
hostility to an external kingdom, an ecclesiastical organization 
— a body for the continual real presence of an ever living Christ 
on earth. It antagonizes all political (using the term in its 
true sense) organization of the kingdom as it does all specula- 
tive theology. It wants the historic Jesus, without historical 
Qiristianity. Dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical organiza- 
tions are, alike, pagan perversions of the pure gospel. Here 
again we have the subjectivism of ''the kernel without the 
husk," the spirit without the body. Again, all the Messianic 
conceptions that Jesus had are merely the local coloring and 
temporary husk of the true religion in the heart of Jesus. He 
was mistaken in his Messianic ideas. 

Here we may take Harnack as the most radical representa- 
tive of the school. In his recent work^ he repudiates Chris- 
tology, with the rest of the school. But his chief bete noire is 
the Church. He practically discards historical or ecclesiastical 
Christianity as a perversion of the Gospel. We note in passing 
Harnack's reduction of Jesus to mere but lofty humanity ; his 
discarding of the miraculous elements of the Gospel, and his 
frank repudiation of ''J^susolatry." The Gospel, as Jesus 
proclaimed it, has to do with the Father, not with the Son,^ 
Jesus was the pathfinder, not the path. His Messianic assump- 
tions were merely the accidental mistakes due to his environ- 
ment. In fact we may say that on all supernaturalistic views 
of the Gospel he occupies the point of view of what may be 
termed ''modern culture,'' and like Sabatier he tries to bring 

* The Essence of Christianity , or as the translator calls it, What /5 
Christianity? 
'P. 154 



68 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

''his religious consciousness into harmony with it." Practically, 
he does this by throwing overboard the whole of the interpre- 
tation of Christianity as made by the Church. Thus he accepts 
as the ''Easter faith" of eternal life, but rejects the "Easter 
message" that Jesus arose from the grave and appeared to His 
disciples. A few years ago he advised German theological 
students with advanced views to petition the government to cut 
out the Apostles' Creed from their required ordination vow. 
The essence of Christianity with him is the life of Jesus in the 
soul of man. Or it consists uniquely in the faith in God the 
Father, which Jesus has revealed. Filial confidence was the 
essence of the personal religion of Jesus. And identity of this 
sentiment in Jesus and in Christians constitutes the continuity of 
Christianity and the immutability of its essence. 

"But the fact that the whole of Jesus' message may be re- 
duced to these two heads — God as Father and the human soul 
so ennobled that it can and does unite with him — show us that 
the Gospel is nowise a positive religion like the rest."^ 

He puts all of Jesus' teaching under three heads : 

"First, the Kingdom of God and its coming. 

Secondly, God the Father and the infinite value of the 
human soul. 

Thirdly, the higher righteousness and the commandment of 
love."2 

Again. "In the combination of these ideas — God the' 
Father, Providence, the position of men as God's children, the 
infinite value of the human soul — ^the whole Gospel is ex- 
pressed."^ 

He explicates the Kingdom of God, entirely unhistorically, 
as a purely subjective, spiritual kingdom. The kingdom of 
God is within the heart. He maintains that Christ divorced his 
ethical teaching entirely from the external forms of religious 

^ What Is Christianity f p. 68. 

^Ibid.,p.S5' 
^ Ibid., p. 74. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 69 

worship. The higher righteousness — freed from alHance with 
the public reHgion, laid emphasis on the ^'intention'' of the doer. 
Its root is the disposition in the heart.^ 

He believes only in the imitation of Christ and not in Jesus- 
olatry. For he agrees with Sabatier that Jesus himself does not 
occupy a central place in the Gospel. It is God the Father that 
is the heart of the Gospel. 

''The Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with the 
Father, not with the Son."^ He was only the first personal 
realization of filial relation to the Father. It was his disciples, 
and the Apostles, and the Fathers and Doctors of the Church 
who put the Person of Jesus in place of his Gospel of the 
Fatherhood of God. 

''The sentence — 'I am the Son of God' — was not inserted in 
the Gospel by Jesus himself, and to put that sentence there side 
by side with the others, is to make an addition to the Gospel.''^ 

"That it is a perverse proceeding to make Christology the 
fundamental substance of the Gospel is shown by Christ's teach- 
ing, which is everywhere directed to the all-important point, and 
summarily confronts every man directly with his God."* "Paul 
became the author of the speculative idea that not only was God 
in Christ, but that Christ himself was possessed of a peculiar 
nature of a heavenly kind."^ In consonance with this, the doc- 
trine of the atonement is explained as a later addition to the pure 
Gospel, made by Paul — "the most luminous personality in the 
history of primitive Christianity." In fact, he gives up the 
whole of the Church's teachings as to the person and work of 
Jesus as Son of God and Saviour — demurring to the "putting a 
Christological Creed in the forefront of the Gospel." Jesus was 
not the eternal Son of God, but the loftiest of the sons of men. 

^ What Is Christianity f p. 77. 
^ Ibid,, p. 154, 
^Ibid., p. 156. 
^ Ibid., p. 198. 
^Ibid., p. 199. 



70 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Hence all worship paid to Jesus is a form of idolatry. For he 
is still only a man — a man with lofty and inspiring views about 
the Unknowable as a Father. He was subject to imperfection 
of knowledge ; biased by the Jewish Messianic conceptions and 
in no way infallible. How then is his religious feeling of filial 
relation to the Father to be certified as other than a personal 
idiosyncrasy of feeling — contagious indeed — ^but why any 
higher or truer than that of some other man ? 

*'The identification of the Logos with Christ was the deter- 
mining factor in the fusion of Greek philosophy with the Apos- 
tolic inheritance and led the more thoughtful Greeks to adopt 
the latter. Most of us regard this identification as inadmis- 
sible, because the way we conceive the world and ethics does not 
point to the existence of any Logos at all.''^ He has previously 
objected to this identification of *'a person who had appeared in 
time and space relations" with the eternal Logos, In fact he 
throughout strenuously attacks the whole of the Church's Chris- 
tology — objecting to this transcendental, cosmical and eternal 
form being given to any Son of Man. 

The latter part of his book is given to the overthrowing of 
historical Christianity, by showing the historical origins of the 
Church's interpretation and the extension of the gospel as a 
kingdom of God on earth. It is by the use of the historical 
method that he seeks to invalidate all the historical forms of au- 
thority in religion. We need not go into details. He covers the 
same ground, and in much the same way, as Sabatier and Marti- 
neau, to show that the kingdom of God is within the soul and not 
in any external institutional form ; that historical Christianity is 
not true pure Christianity. All historical transformations of 
Christianity are perversions of, and lapses from the pure gospel. 
That is really his thesis. The meal, in which the leaven was 
placed, corrupted the leaven rather than the leaven leavening 
the whole lump. In this course of transformation it is only oc- 
casionally that the true Gospel shines out as in the apostolic age, 

' P. 220. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 71 

especially in the universalizing of the Gospel by St. Paul ; in the 
evangelical side of St. Augustine, and in the inwardness and 
spirituality of the first phase of the reformation, especially in 
Luther. In the patristic age, ''a blow was dealt to the direct 
and immediate element in religion," as Christians were brought 
under the authority and tutelage of the church. Growing intel- 
lectualism was beginning the mischievous work of orthodoxy, 
and the church was developing into an institution with power 
over the individuals. In the Greek church, the Gospel ''takes 
the form, not of a Christian product in Greek dress, but of a 
Greek product in Christian dress.'' Here too developed the 
slavish obedience to tradition and here too ''arose the aggressive 
and all-devouring orthodoxy of State and Church, or rather of 
the State-Church."^ "But with traditionalism and intellectual- 
ism, a further element is associated, namely ritualism." Chris- 
tianity relapsed into the lowest class of religions — "descended to 
the level where religion may be described as a cult and nothing 
but a cult."^ "As a whole and in its structure the system of the 
Oriental churches is foreign to the Gospel." 

The Roman Catholic Church, while far in advance of Greek 
Catholicism, however, only exaggerated its evil of ecclesiasti- 
cism. It "privily pushed itself into place of the Roman world- 
empire of which it is the actual continuation."^ Finally he asks 
as to Roman Catholicism, "What modifications has the Gospel 
undergone and how much of it is left? This, however, is not a 
matter that needs many words — ^the whole outward and visible 
institution of a Church claiming divine dignity has no founda- 
tion whatever in the Gospel. It is a case not of distortion, but 
of total perversion."* 

Finally, after acknowledging that "the Roman Church is the 
most comprehensive, the vastest, the most complicated and yet 

* P. 242. 
^ Pp. 256-261. 

3 P. 270. 

4 P. 281. 



72 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

at the same time the most uniform structure, which so far as 
we know, history has produced," he goes on to declare that 
"Roman CathoUcism has nothing to do with the Gospel, nay, is 
in fundamental contradiction with it."^ 

This is noteworthy as showing the lack of the historical spirit 
in one using the historical method. The greatest historical in- 
stitution of the world is not significant of God in history. 

His treatment of Protestantism is not so full or drastic as 
that of Sabatier. He emphasizes especially the protest of the 
early reformers against sacerdotalism; against all formal ex- 
ternal authority in religion, and against all ritualism. At the 
same time he speaks of "the Catholicising of the Protestant 
Churches," adding, "I do not mean they are becoming papal : 
I mean that they are becoming churches of ordinance, of doc- 
trine and ceremony."^ 

All this is again the "putting of religion on the Catholic 
plane." Protestant Christianity in making doctrine, discipline 
and worship of Christ to be essentials of Christianity is only 
another form of a relgion of authority, which calls for an 
earnest protest of liberty of the Christian man ; a return to the 
pure primitive Gospel ; a casting away the husks of religion, and 
keeping only the kernel ; an endeavor on the part of each indi- 
vidual to be a Jesus, or to have his personal feeling in his heart 
apart from historical, institutional Christianity ; apart from all 
the historical forms devoted to the nurture of man's religious 
nature. 

>P.283. 
'P. 316. 



CHAPTER 11— Continued 

Taking Sabatier and the Ritchlian Harnack as the religious 
representatives of modern culture, we find what an insignificant 
remnant of historical Christianity can be accepted. Authority 
and conformity are set aside as inconsistent with freedom. In 
the soul of each individual, the immediate relation to God is 
the whole soul, life, spirit and authority of religion. There is 
no orthodoxy, no communal authority, no authority even of a 
Jesus. It is only just to state that both of them were nurtured 
in the evangelical type of Protestantism. It is fair to suppose 
that, without this nurture, they would not have been so deeply 
religious in spirit as they show themselves to be, nor so earnest 
in seeking a secure place for religion in modern life. 

They accept modern thought as authoritative. Christianity 
must be purged of any statements or belief that conflict with it. 
Modern thought is knowledge. And where Christianity, in its 
intellectual form, contradicts modern culture, it is to be given 
up. Only the subjective feeling or sentiment — the essential ele- 
ment in Christianity — is to be kept. All else is husk, supersti- 
tious idealizings of facts. 

The Zeitgeist has so fully mastered them that they mistake 
the spirit of the age for the spirit of the ages. They are too 
ready to apply to the historical forms of Christianity the poet's 
lines : 

"Our little systems have their day, 
They have their day and cease to be." 

But they have not profited by a study of the history of all forms 
of knowledge, and especially of the forms of criticism, to apply 
these lines to them. They are too ready to accept modern 
critical views as final ; to accept the spirit of this age as that of 
''the age of of reason." Both of them, too, being students of 

73 



74 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

history and using the historical method fail to see the perfectly 
unhistorical spirit they betray in their interpretation of all the 
forms of historical Christianity as being corruptions rather than 
developments. 

Both also fail to see that their "essence of Christianity" and 
"religion of the spirit," are no more reconcilable with the meta- 
physics of modern science than is any form of orthodoxy. This 
has no more place for God the Father and the filial relation of 
man to Him, than it has for the husks which they have dis- 
carded. All are alike Aberglaube. It is simply impossible for 
any one who holds the rigid mechanical view of the universe, 
and the theory of reality that is put forth by some men of 
science — the bad metaphysics which really form no part of posi- 
tive science — to find any place for any sort of religion.^ 

The enlightenment, the critical empiricism of the mere under- 
standing always means the dry rot of all living institutions. 
When the "very pulses of the machine," of wife, mother, child ; 
of literature, art and religion, are laid bare and declared to be 
the whole of their reality ; when the nimbus of the higher hu- 
manity, the warm life-blood within and the garments of light 
and beauty and worth without, are criticised away we are left 
with a lifeless skeleton. 

"The parts in his hand 
He may hold and clasp, 
But lost is the living link, alas!" 

Life goes with it out of all thus criticised. Our literature 
ceases to be inspiring and elevating. Our art becomes mechan- 
ically and vulgarly realistic. Our religion becomes at best an 
arid Deism. Our sacred books — well, look at what our modern 
scientific criticism has made of the Bible. Granted that from 
their point of view the critics have done scientific work, it re- 
mains to be said that their work is abstract and imperfect as an 
analysis of the real concrete nature of the Bible. Looked at 
from their point of view alone, it ceases to be The Bible— the 

* Cf. Chap. IV of this volume. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 75 

life-giving form of sacred literature. This shows, at least, the 
inadequacy of the scientific and critical points of view. It 
shows that their categories cannot measure man as a creature 
of a larger discourse ; that to have a spirit we need the nearer, 
clearer, more concrete view, that art, religion and philosophy 
afford. 

God the Father is not a verifiable entity for the monistic 
metaphysics of some men of science. Where Nature is all, 
the real reality — God — there is none. 

But let us note, to what they have reduced Christianity — 
what enveloping husks of historical developments they have 
peeled ofif, to find the pure undeveloped form to which they still 
give allegiance. They give us — 

( 1 ) A non-miraculous Christianity. 

(2) A non-Christocentric Christianity. 

(3) A non-credal Christianity. 

(4) A non-ecclesiastical Christianity. 

(5) A non-cult religion. 

(6) A non-knowable Deity. 

(7) An immediate feeling in the heart of each believer of his 

relation to the Unknowable God, as Father. 

(8) A dead and buried Jesus of Nazareth — a man in whose 

heart there was true religion and whose message is 
'" above his person. 
The six negatives set aside all the historical forms in which 
the Church has embodied her exposition and mediations of 
Christianity. The two positives have always been held by every 
form of the Church, but not in the abstract form in which they 
present them. As a matter of historical fact there never has 
been such a form of Christianity on earth. Such a Christianity 
has to be evolved from the inner consciousness of the critics. 
The real Christianity, which it is the business of historical stu- 
dents to study, and of philosophers to estimate, is the factual 
Christianity of the Church — a Christianity of creed, cult and 
polity, a kingdom of God on earth — in our midst. We may 



-](> 1-HE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

grant the relative imperfection of all these factors, and the tem- 
porary and metaphorical character of many religious concep- 
tions. But we must distinguish between these and speculative, 
catholic theology. So too, as to the persistent type of polity and 
cult, amid all their transformations — Roman, Greek and 
Protestant. We must see them as organic elements in an insti- 
tutional Christianity that has had a much more permanent form 
than any civil institution. We must see the function of all these 
elements in the educative work of the Church, and the ideal end 
towards which it has been so mightily energizing through the 
centuries. Philosophy is not religion, but it gives the rational 
interpretation of it, which neither science nor history can give. 
They can give the facts and the order of facts, but not the spir- 
itual link, not the teleological logic immanent in the whole his- 
tory of Christianity that makes it evident that it is a work of 
God. 

It is to be noted that these writers give up the miraculous ele- 
ment in the New Testament. They practically accept the views 
of Strauss and Renan. Thus they answer the objection of mod- 
ern thought to miracles, by agreeing with it. The miraculous 
birth, resurrection and glorification of Jesus form no part of the 
historical Jesus, or of the essence of Christianity. This, of 
course, is a break with the whole historical view of Christ, 
woven into the very fibre of the Church's interpretation. It 
gives us a purely human Jesus, with at best a uniquely acute 
sense of that filial relation to God that is possible to all men — 
aroused and quickened more or less by means of the contagious 
sentiment of that of Jesus, who "was crucified, dead and 
buried." This paragraph in the Apostles' Creed gives the his- 
torical close of the life of Jesus. 

As another has said ''the last authentic utterance of the his- 
torical Jesus was his cry of despair on the cross." 

They take us back from the Christ of the Church, and this 
is what they give us in its place. All the function of mediation 
left to Christ, is that which comes from his common earthly life, 



SABATIER. HARNACK AND LOISY ^j 

through the activity of human memory. This mediation be- 
comes less and less essential. As Martineau said : he is medi- 
ator, ''not instead of immediate revelation, but simply as making 
us more aware of it and helping us to interpret it. For in the 
constitution of the human soul there is provision for an immedi- 
ate apprehension of God."^ 

As to their non-miraculous Christianity, it would certainly 
necessitate a most corrosive revision of the creed and cult of 
every form of the Church. All worship of Christ, in hymn and 
sacrament, would have to be eliminated. All the warm glow of 
thanksgiving for our redemption through Him must needs be 
given up. All the moral life that comes from the belief that 
personality, human and divine are potencies above the mechan- 
ical universe would cease. The rational refusal to subordinate 
personality to impersonal mechanism, is the root and ground of 
all philosophical maintenance of what is termed the miraculous 
element in Christianity. 

The vulgar miraculous, like all other vulgar things, is out 
of the order of the rational. But the miracles of personality — 
miracles connected with the natural supernaturalism of such a 
personality as that of Jesus, were possible, probable, necessary. 
Relatively to the mechanical conception of nature, and of man 
as a mechanical part of this nature, all truly human achieve- 
ments are miracles. Again laws of nature are no longer reified 
as actual forces, but are held by scientific men to be gen- 
eralized formula of description. No one has better disposed of 
Hume's argument against miracles than Professor Huxley.^ 
That that which never has happened, never can happen — the gist 
of Hume's argument — would not now be accepted by any 
scientific men. If a man were to rise from the dead before their 
eyes, they would simply enlarge their formula — their natural 
law, their generalized statement, to include the new phenome- 

^ Martineau: Seat of Authority in Religion; p. 651. 
^Hume, by Professor Huxley; Chap. VIII in The English Men of 
Letters series. 



78 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

non, just as they do when a new planet swims into their ken. 
Vulgar ideas of miracles, and in the Bible apparently vulgar 
miracles may be found, but miracles of personality are in no 
sense vulgar or irrational. It is only when mechanical causality 
is reified and made the only efficient causality, that science can 
say a word against the possibility of miracles. And now that 
scientific men have eviscerated causality of all causal efficiency^ 
the bug-bear of the impossibility is slain in the camp of science 
itself. 

Historical Christianity was founded upon miracles of per- 
sonality. The miraculous element is of its very essence^ if we 
may use the term of Harnack. There never has been an actual, 
historical non-miraculous Christianity. Students of history 
may or may not believe in miracles. But when they come to 
study Christianity as an historical phenomenon they must study 
it as professedly founded on miracle. That is the only sort of 
Christianity that offers itself for their study. To evolve a con- 
ception of the essence of Christianity, or of the religion of the 
spirit from their subjective consciousness, and call it true Chris- 
tianity is enough to bow them out of the consideration of all 
students of history. They have forsaken the realm of the posi- 
tive, the actual, for the cloudlands of mere subjectivity. They 
are in the realm of illusions and delusions, in a dream world, 
where one dream is as little real as another — one view of re- 
ligion as little verifiable and rational as another. But when 
they come to study actual Christianity they consider it as a mere 
dream, at best as a degenerate externalization of their own 
dream. This externalization, this husk of their dream-kernel 
they then treat under the concept of mechanical causality. They 
take its primitive form, and then trace its historical transforma- 
tions as they would trace the transformation of heat into light* 
or of clay into bricks. The mechanism of thing and environ- 
ment is their formula. Given a this and a certain environment, 
and a that is the mechanical result. AH conception of a tele- 
^Cf. Chap. IV, p. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 79 

ological development — if that be not a redundant formula, for all 
development is teleological — is forsaken. In fact all conception 
of development is replaced by the conception of degeneracy. 
This is the curious hybrid result of their separating and yet com- 
mingling of esoteric Christianity with historical Christianity. 

Again, they treat the historical transformations of Christian- 
ity under mechanical conceptions. They find a certain sort of 
development of institutional Christianity, but comparing it with 
their esoteric Christianity, they pronounce it to be a lapse rather 
than a development. We demur to the treatment of any of the 
institutional acquisitions of man under the concepts of physical 
science — of thing and environment.^ Mere physical causality 
even when it is reified as an actual power, is no creator of man 
and his institutions. In truth, no efficient causality can be 
thought except as an element in a final cause. The final cause 
is the true and abiding first cause. The banishing of final 
causes, as barren vestals, has been followed recently by the 
abandonment of real efficient causality by modern scientific 
thinkers. In this, they are but returning to the view of Hume, 
Comte and, for that matter of Kant too, who never really re- 
futed Hume's view. We have only a succession of events in 
time, casually, but not causally related. But these writers still 
use the anthropomorphized conception of efficient causality. 
They take the earliest form of historical Christianity, and ac- 
count for its transformations by the successive environment of 
Greek philosophy, Roman polity and pagan cult. Then they 
consider its first form to be its truest form, and all its transfor- 
mations, lapses. 

One who goes back to Aristotle, or to catholic philosophy of 
all ages, for his doctrines of causality and the nature of a thing, 
will never seek an explanation of any institution or creed in its 
earliest empirical form. Teleology is the highest form of caus- 
ality, and the nature of a thing is seen only in its perfected or 

developed form. Hence the crab cry of *'Back to ;" back 

^ Cf. Chap. IV of this volume. 



8o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

to the first empirical form of anything as to its true form — the 
norm by which to test all subsequent transformations — is a 
cry that is logically a call back to an alogical view of the world, 
whose practical and logical result is that of pessimism. 

Historically the first form of Christianity is what they would 
term a Jewish sect, founded upon relations to a Jewish Mes- 
siah. It is not true that the personal religion of Jesus, his sense 
of filial relation to God, constitutes the essence of Christianity 
and, in no historical sense, can it be called primitive Christianity. 
Its first form was that of the community of disciples of Jesus, 
founded upon belief in Him — not as a friend or brother or 
leader, but as the victorious, glorified Saviour, who still was re- 
demptively present with them. One may grant, as the Church 
has always done, that there was a freshness, vigor and inspira- 
tion in this pristine form of Christianity that has scarcely ever 
been present in its later and fuller forms. Scanty creed and 
polity and cult were theirs, but such as they were, it has always 
been considered that they gave the historical germs for the later 
and fuller developments of historical Christianity. Yet primi- 
tive Christianity was not more than the germinating seed. All 
subsequent transformations have been either a development or 
a degeneracy, as the tree is either a development or a degeneracy 
of the seed. These writers take the latter view. Moreover, if 
Greek philosophy and Roman law and pagan cult, as environ- 
ments, served only to deteriorate primitive Christianity, we must 
give up the conception of a divine Pedagogue in all pre-Christian 
history. We do not consider the soil and water and air — the 
environment of the seed — as hostile to its true development. 
We cannot believe in God in human history, and believe that all 
the extra-Christian achievements of the race were poisonous 
environments, hostile to the development of Christianity. The 
education of the race can be taken partially by no thinker, espe- 
cially by any one using the conception of development. Any 
reversion to the primitive form of any living institution, any 
denial of the fostering function of environment as furthering 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 8i 

development of the germ, betrays the utmost artlessness of un- 
scientific, unhistorical and unphilosophical comprehension. The 
organic connection of Christianity with Judaism is allowed. 
But how can any one who believes in a Logos in human history, 
decline to extend this organic conception to all the other environ- 
ing achievements of the Logos in the human race. 

The Greek Fathers of old, as Lessing and Hegel of modern 
times, voiced this conception of ^'the education of the race," 
each nation being given some specific task or lesson to learn, 
that in the fullness of the times they might all contribute to the 
catholic wisdom and welfare of the organic race. The King- 
dom of heaven — the consummate flower of the education of the 
race — was likened by the Founder himself ''to a seed that a man 
should cast into the ground, which groweth up, he knoweth not 
how, because the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself." He 
who made the seed made also the fertile earth into which he 
casts it in order that it may not retain its primitive, undeveloped 
form, but spring up and grow by taking nutriment from soil and 
air and sky. So historical Christianity grew and developed. 
The world was prepared for the seed. Greek philosophy, 
Roman law and pagan cults were the earth into which it was cast 
and from which it was to draw nutriment. As a matter of fact 
these others were more ready to receive Christianity than were 
the Jews. Greek philosophy was as instrumental in formulat- 
ing the Nicene symbol, as the Jewish Messianic idea was in 
developing the Messianic role of Jesus. The same is true of all 
the other environments that have been instrumental in the de- 
veloping transformations of historical Christianity. The Gospel 
has never been pure unincarnate spirit. It has expanded from 
that of a small Jewish sect into a world wide church, by means 
of fostering environments. Christianity has always been an 
embodied religion. To learn what Christianity is one must go 
to history. And going to history he finds it, not as an invisible 
essence, but as a nineteen century old and a world-wide organi- 
zation that has drawn nutriment and made itself a growing 

6 



82 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

body from all the other attainments of the human spirit. But 
such a comprehensive non-puritanical conception of historical 
Christianity seems foreign to these writers. They are puritans 
of the most extreme form. They are mere subjectivists of the 
Neo-Platonic type. With them true Christianity is all in the 
heart, or all in the air. The secular is profane. It is the devirs, 
not God's world. All the historical developments of Christian- 
ity have been due to hostile environments. We must back to 
the personal religion in the heart of a Jewish peasant ; back to 
the primitive form of the community that believed in Jesus as 
Messiah. 

If we believe in development, we cannot take this crab cry 
too seriously. It represents at best our natural interest in the 
beginnings of things. But the beginnings are necessarily seen 
in the liglit of their developed form. We like to go back to the 
days of our childhood, to the times of the founding of any in- 
stitution of which we are members. We venerate our ancestors. 
We idealize the temporal beginnings of our societies, because 
we are enjoying the fruition of them. We idealize the seed be- 
cause we see the tree. Cold historical criticism, however, will 
never assent to the view that the primitive form of any institu- 
tion is its most perfectly developed form. Apart from the re- 
freshment of spirit that comes to us in the midst of the strenuous 
life of manhood, from going back to the idealized days of our 
childhood, there is no profit in looking backward rather than 
forward. Intellectually, the crab cry — back to the beginning of 
anything that is in a process of development— is irrational. We 
know what this crab-cry ^'Back to Kant" means. It means back 
to the first stage of his work, and a negating of his fuller devel- 
opment of other phases. It means back to the First Critique — 
back to the first stage of Kant's whole system ; back to the nega- 
tive side of that Critique, It means practically, back to an un- 
spiritual, mechanical, materialistic interpretation of the universe. 
God, freedom and immortality, for which Kant's whole philoso- 
phy stood are thus dismissed, as the hybrid, degenerate forms 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 83 

of his philosophy, by the Neo-Kantianer. We know Rousseau's 
crab-cry of ''back to Nature from civiHzation." We know Von 
Hartmann's crab-cry of, back from consciousness into the un- 
conscious, by cosmic suicide. We know all these crab-cries as 
voicing the belief in retrogression rather than in development in 
all human institutions. We know them, logically, as the fatigue 
forms of Orientalism in opposition to the strenuous forms of 
the Occident. So when we come to the crab-cry of these 
writers, ''back to the primitive Gospel," back to the religion in 
the heart of Jesus, we may be prepared to find the same vicious 
error of abstraction. It is a taking of a part for the whole, a 
seed for the tree, an undeveloped for a developed form of 
Christianity. For the empirical origin of any institution is al- 
was a relatively undeveloped, imperfect form. The end is not 
yet, especially in the first stage. The end is real, and efficient, 
or there would be no development. The final cause is the real 
first cause, though in the order of the process, it is the last in the 
empirical realization of the true nature of anything. Either his- 
torical Christianity of to-day is a more developed form, or the 
concept of development applies to everything but to Christianity. 

Again, this return to the primitive, is psychologically impos- 
sible. We cannot demodernize ourselves. We cannot return to 
primitive Christianity. We cannot Judaize ourselves, put our- 
selves into the states of consciousness of the early disciples. For 
better or worse, our consciousness is that of the modern world, 
into which Greek and Roman and Germanic elements have en- 
tered. No more indeed, we should add, can we absolutely mod- 
ernize ourselves ; repudiate those historical fibres that are not 
modern, and yet are very flesh of our flesh and spirit of our 
spirit. The spirit of the age, the modern spirit, is abstract and 
untrue when wrested from its organic continuity with the spirit 
of the ages. 

The crab-cry is pathological and pessimistic. Psycholog- 
ically it can never be realized. Christianity is what it has be- 
come. Nor can we go back to "the historic Christ." We can- 



84 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

not "rediscover Christ." If there be no really ever-present 
Christ in his Church, no Logos in Christian history, then the 
only Christ that we can ''rediscover" is the dead and buried 
Jesus. Back to Jesus who died and was buried ; back to Jesus 
''whose last authentic utterance was his cry of despair on the 
cross." Back to him through the imperfect reproduction of his- 
torical memory — that is the utmost that this cry, "back to Jesus," 
can mean, unless we give rein to what is called the historical 
imagination. But that is just what critics fault tradition and 
the Church for doing — for giving idealized embellishments of 
empirical facts. 

The historian, especially the historian who believes in the 
modern doctrine of development, should be the last one to make 
the crab-cry "back." Whatever the primitive historical form 
of any institution may have been, it must be, for the historical 
evolutionist, primitive, undeveloped, relatively more imperfect 
than its later and more developed forms. The truth in this cry, 
back to the primitive, one may well recognize. It is the truth 
that, for feeling, the first outburst of a new movement is 
warmer ; for thought and action it is more inspired and heroic. 
If modern developed forms of Christianity could have the warm 
feelings and the inspired insig'hts and the heroic energizing of 
primitive Christianity — could its length and breadth be multi- 
plied by the intensive depth of the early community of Chris- 
tians, there would come such a time of refreshing and strength- 
ening of the Christian life as would make Christianity far more 
saving than it now is. But historical Christianity has always 
recognized this. Special inspiration and authority are accorded 
to the apostles. The Church has always bid men look back lov- 
ingly to these times. Her whole doctrine and cult are means to 
get men in touch with that warm inspiration of the primitive 
Church. 

But historical Christianity has never been a mere copying of 
primitive Christianity. It has never been a holding fast to an 
unchangeable identity without perpetual, life-stimulating ele- 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 85 

ments of difference. Its vital cry has not been, back into the 
womb, or forward into the tomb, but forward into new and 
fuller life. 

This crab-cry finds its logical expression in Orientalism 
and in Von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious, All 
conscious personal life is a lapse from the Unconscious. Hence 
humanity's progress must be a backward one into the Un- 
conscious. It is needless to expatiate upon the Oriental con- 
ception, even in the modern form that Von Hartmann gives it. 
We know that its heart is absolutely pessimistic in regard to all 
of humanity's hard earned forms of culture. We know that 
rigorous asceticism — repression of life, is its method for retro- 
gression into the unconscious, and that ''cosmic suicide" is its 
ideal goal. 

This seems like comic philosophy in face of the world now 
marching gaily to the tune of progress. But in spite of the 
professedly regnant Zeitgeist of progress, one may detect much 
of the very opposite spirit in literature, and many forms of the 
reactionary spirit in all the spheres of modern life. It need 
only be noted that its heart is pessimistic, its head Oriental, its 
goal Brahm or Nirvanah, or non-existence of personality in the 
Unconscious. 

This is the real ''yellow peril" in our modern Occidental 
world. It is the spirit of the anti-Christ, the anti-logos, the anti- 
rational and the anti-progress view of the world, as a process of 
development towards full realization of humanity into a King- 
dom or Republic of God on earth. 

Everyone who is raising the crab-cry is flying in the face of 
our western form of civilization, and aiding and abetting the 
"yellow peril." 

Even the cry "Back to Jesus" — to the historical Jesus, who 
lived and died and was buried centuries ago, means a negation 
of the hard earned forms of Christian culture of the intervening 
centuries. And, put it in the subjective form of the religious 
feeling that was in the heart of Jesus, as Sabatier and Harnack 



86 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

do, it is a further reversion to the Oriental type ; a large advance 
toward esoteric Buddhism. Harnack's lectures are professedly 
ad popiihim academiciim, to those afflicted with the various ail- 
ments of modern culture. He does not, after all, take mod- 
ern culture seriously. Or, he does, and he does not. But 
in devastating historical Christianity he runs into such utter 
subjectivism as leads logically, as it always historically has led, 
towards the Oriental, pessimistic view of man and the world. 
Rational authority there is none. The freedom of capricious 
feeling soon tires, and non-existence becomes a welcome goal. 
The freedom of Oriental thought is the freedom of non-exist- 
ence — all forms of empirical, historical existence being bad. 

Literally, back to anything means, and finally leads back to 
blank. And that is where the cry, back to the historical Jesus, 
and then, back to a personal feeling in the heart of one man out 
of millions of men — that is back to Jesus apart from historical 
Christianity, leads. It is back to a feeling of an unmediated 
relation to God — ^back to Neo-Platonic ecstasy — a swoon of 
man's rational nature, and then an awakening to a pessimistic 
view of reality — to despair and a longing to cease to be, a long- 
ing for Nirvanah, an absorption in Brahm, in the unconscious. 

So back to Jesus of history — ^back to a Christ without his- 
torical Christianity — ^back to a filial feeling in the heart of Jesus 
— all this backwardness is one of negation that ends in nothing 
that we can know — nothing that can validate itself — a super- 
sensuous something that eludes our grasp, and soon passes away 
into an illusory form of abnormal consciousness. 

Again we note what a meagre view is left us of the historical 
Jesus by these puritanical critics, who would have a gospel with- 
out Christianity, and a Jesus without the Church's interpretation 
of his indwelling, energizing presence. They woul fain "re-dis- 
cover Jesus" by taking away all these interpretations of him. 
They see that St. John's and St. Paul's conceptions were inter- 
pretations, and taking these away ; taking away all that anyone 
has thought and said about Jesus, they finally leave us with only 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 87 

a few shreds of genuine Gospel history for a portrait of Jesus of 
Nazareth. But even then they must allow that Jesus interpreted 
himself in the light of a Messianic kingdom. This, however, is 
also to be eliminated as a mistaken view that he had as to his 
own person and work. 

Let as little remain as their arbitrary ideal permits, we can 
easily see that the critics cannot so dis-conscious themselves as 
to avoid interpreting Jesus in light of their modern conceptions. 
At best they are only doing, as individuals, what the Church has 
done collectively. They cannot get back face to face with Jesus 
of Nazareth as he was, apart from what he is to them, as well 
as what he was to his early disciples. At best it is a choice of 
private, or of social interpretation. The social interpretation is 
age-long and corporate. The private interpretation is ephem- 
eral. 

We must say then, that we cannot have a Christ without 
Christianity. The historical Christ is the Christ of the Church. 
No mere recrudescence of the empirical man Jesus of Nazareth 
is possible, or, if possible, desirable. That would give us a 
dead and absent Christ, a Christ "after the flesh," so that we 
could only speak metaphorically of Christ present in our hearts. 
This could only mean the emotion roused in our hearts by the 
recall in memory of the meagre portrait of the historical Jesus 
left us by these critics. 

We must interpret Jesus. There is no choice in the matter, 
if we would have any Jesus. The only choice is that between 
the subjective interpretation of individuals, and the objective 
one of the Church of the centuries. If we must be hypnotized, 
to speak in metaphor, we can choose between auto-hypnosis and 
that of the larger, objective form. 

One who takes a historical view of any institution ; one who 
wishes to get away from his subjective prejudices to an objective 
rational view, will demur to the peculiarly narrow and subjective 
view of Christianity held by Sabatier and Harnack. They both 
profess to treat the subject as historians. They do nothing of 



88 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

the sort. Historians treat of actualities. They treat reUgion as 
an inner subjective feeling, spirit or essence. The historical 
parts of their books treat of historical actualities, which they 
consider as mere husks that do not even perform their function 
of husks, to protect and nurture the kernel. 

There is no more specious falsehood than that which treats 
of essence as apart from its manifestation. It is just as abstract 
and untrue as that which takes the brute actual as the whole of 
reality. Essence is a category of relativity. It always relates 
itself to that of manifestation. An essence that does not appear, 
that does not manifest itself, show itself in objective form, is a 
mere will-o'-the-wisp that perverse subjectivists pursue, when 
they become pessimistic in regard to the world of actualities. 
It is not a sane or wholesome — not an objective or rational cate- 
gory when divorced from that to which it relates. So when one 
wishes to get at the bottom of things — at the ground or essence 
of religion apart from its historical manifestations, he is look- 
ing for an abstraction. Essence as ground is always a ground of 
existence. Existence springs from and takes up and preserves 
its ground, only in the form of actualities. Mere brute actuali- 
ties — mere sensuous realities — well, they may also be will-o'-the- 
wisps of metaphysical scientists. But actualities are for in- 
telligence always intelligent, purposive actualities. Any actual- 
ity is more concrete than its essence. It is at least a grade of 
reality and rationality. The essence is nothing but an abstrac- 
tion that exists only in the more concrete form of actuality. A 
cause that has no effect, is no cause. An essence that has no 
manifestation is no essence. Mere potentiality is as good as 
nothing. It is in the actual, that the whole of its potency is mani- 
fested. What is not manifested must ever remain an unknown. 
An unuttered, un-outered essence is something that no rational 
mind can deal with — especially no historical student. The real 
is the actual, and every form of the actual is a phase or degree of 
the rational. It is the manifestation — the self-revelation of its 
own ground or essence, and of the whole of its essence. So 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 89 

with all the categories of relativity — form and content, inner and 
outer, the whole and its parts. They are all abstractions. The 
concrete is the actual. The style is the man. The content is the 
form. The outer is the inner, its inmost outerance. The bad- 
acting man has not a good will, nor the selfish man a good heart. 
The good-will which wills nothing good, is as good as no will. 
Let us therefore have done with treating of religion under these 
abstract categories of essence ; of the innner as opposed to the 
outer, of the kernel without the husk, of the spirit without the 
body. Let us treat of it as an actuality — a concrete unity of the 
inner and outer, of essence and manifestation ; always remem- 
bering that an actuality is not a merely physical thing, but a self- 
utterance of some phase of reason. 

The historical treatment of religion then, we insist, must be 
confined to its actualized forms. 

It is true, that this has not the last and truest word to say in 
the matter. If we are to intellectually validate our religion, we 
shall have to go to the higher point of view of philosophy. We 
shall have to see what the real, ultimate Actual is, in the light of 
which we can see the degrees of reality to be found in all the 
forms of nature, and in all the institutions of humanity. That 
is, we shall have to rise to the plane where, *'the real is the ra- 
tional and the rational the real," in order to see the phase of 
reality in every form of actuality — matter, life, the institutions of 
the family, state and church. 

Here we must find an ideal-actual First Principle, pure, 
Actuality — ^the Actus Purus of the scholastics — as the efficient 
and final cause of the whole process — of the whole historical de- 
velopment of the various forms of empirical actualities. As all 
development implies imperfection in that which is developing, it 
also implies a final cause or end or self-realized form, that is 
potent as an efficient cause of change from a lower to a higher 
form of empirical actuality. So a history of religions and a 
science of religion are always to be followed by a philosophy of 
religion, for its ultimate justification. 



90 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

We may have a psychology of religion, or the psychological 
basis of religion with Sabatier, but that is no rational justifica- 
tion of religion, any more than a psychology of illusions is a 
justification of illusions. So, too, we may have a history of re- 
ligion in all its forms, but that is no justification of religion in 
any form. When one comes to a validating of religion, and a 
justification of any form of it, one is forced to the philosophical 
point of view. But neither Sabatier nor Harnack rises to that 
plane. They remain on the psychological and historical plane. 
Man is by nature — using nature in the ordinary sense of the 
term — a religious being. Psychologically, he cannot help being 
religious, even if he be an atheist. Historically, this psycho- 
logical necessity manifests itself in various forms. An ideal of 
the essence of religion is set up, by which to criticise all forms 
of the manifestation of this psychological necessity. This ideal 
is purely a subjective one — a personal feeling, a nondescript 
form of emotion — at best a symbolical form of representation, 
as the sense of filial relation to the Heavenly Father — a symbol 
of man's relation to the Great Unknowable. This forthwith is 
taken as the essence of Christianity. Then every form or 
historical manifestation of Christianity is invalidated, because 
it has outerances of more concrete reality. What is *^the es- 
sence of Christianity?" asks, Harnack. What is ^'the religion 
of the Spirit" as utterly opposed to all religions of authority? 
asks Sabatier. Their answer is, that it is not historical Christi- 
anity — not any form of actual Christianity, but an essence that is 
impotent to outer itself. 

Their object is to reconcile religion with the modern scien- 
tific view of the universe. But this scientific view always treats 
of historical objective actualities. Their reconciliation — under 
the specious guise of the abstract categories of essence and spirit 
— consists in an elimination of objective actualities, and a plac- 
ing of religion in the sphere of what, to science, is subjective and 
illusory. Science remains, but religion is in the realm of ne- 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 91 

science, which is, for a rational man, the realm of non-entity — 
of fiction, not of fact. 

To justify intellectually any human activity, even though it 
be a psychological necessity, one must rationalize it. They put 
religion beyond the realm of rationality, and appeal only to 
feeling — to a capricious subjective emotion, of which science 
and modern culture give anything but a rational justification. 
Their whole contention seems to be that religion cannot be man- 
ifested; that it is an inner essence that cannot outer itself; that 
every form of its manifestation is an impotent attempt at self- 
expression — a devolution rather than an evolution. We are not 
concerned to identify any and every stage of an evolution with 
the goal and finished product. But we must appreciate each 
phase as a stage in a process that is a progress. 

The estimation of the degree of reality, belonging to any 
phase of a developing process, belongs to philosophy. Philos- 
ophy does not construct religion or any other form of human in- 
stitution, but it must seek to construe it, to see its place in the or- 
ganic system. 

Science and history deal with objective actualities. They 
have the first word to say, if not the last, as to what Christianity 
is, as an historical actuality. 

So we may insist that these writers should have at least the 
historical spirit and that they treat religion fairly on the stand- 
point of modern scientific culture — that they deal with Christi- 
anity as an historical actuality. If Harnack did this he would 
answer his question, "What is Christianity," by saying that it is 
historical Christianity, in all its diverse forms of manifestation. 
That of course is not the ultimate answer, but it is the only 
answer that is allowable from the historical and scientific view of 
the matter. Of an inner spirit, an unactualized essence, neither 
history nor science can take any account. 

When we come to the philosophical point of view, we can 
criticise every actual form of Christianity, because every form 
of the empirical actual is in a process of development, and 



92 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

therefore in an imperfect form. We can say that "the Chris- 
tianity of men has always been profoundly inferior to the 
Christianity of God" ; that the absolute religion has never had 
historical form, but that all forms have been developments 
toward and through the absolute religion — the at-one-ment of 
man with God. But the final cause is always a non-empirical 
cause — one with which strict science has no concern, and phi- 
losophy all concern. 

The personal religion that Jesus had, his conscious sinless 
unity with the Father — that is not historical Christianity. 
Christianity is the religion founded upon the person and work 
of Jesus, whose ultimate aim is to bring all men into this 
conscious sinless relation to God. To that end Christ gave 
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, for the per- 
fecting of the saints, for the edifying (developing, upbuilding) 
of his body, the Church, till all together come unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we ''may grow 
up (develop) into Him in all things, which is the head, even 
Christ.'' (Ephesians iv, 11-15). In its first historical form, 
Christianity may have been little more than a Jewish sect, 
as these writers hold it to have been. But the whole his- 
tory of Christianity has been a development into wider and 
higher forms — soon taking its place as a world-religion on its 
way to take its place as the world-religion. The subjective 
religion that Jesus had, was not Christianity. Historically his 
personal religion was the Jewish religion. He was a conformist. 
The Son of God became the son of man, that He might make the 
sons of men sons of God and brethren in his corporate king- 
dom. The history of Christianity shows the process of this 
work. Its historical transformations are stages in this edifying 
process. The final end or purpose of the Saviour's work abides 
as a measure of progress, and as a standard by means of which 
we may see that one phase of this development is a higher stage 
than another. 

Christianity has never been all in the air, or all in mere sub- 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 93 

jective feeling. It has never been an unincarnate spirit — an 
essence without manifestation, a soul without a body. Surely 
historical students with such full appreciation of the modern 
scientific view of reality should be the last to take this merely 
subjective view of any human institution. 

A true development implies both the transformation and ele- 
vation of a primitive form. Let Sabatier and Harnack make as 
little as they do of the primitive form of Christianity, they 
are bound to make more of its historical transformations than 
they do. A developing form never retains, and can never go 
back to, its primitive form. The transformations then must 
have been for the better or the worse. If for the worse, as 
they contend, then one can only speak of the devil rather than 
of God in history — at least in Christian history. Historical 
Christianity has never identified the Church militant with the 
Church triumphant. That is the goal, toward which it is al- 
ways making, perhaps at best, certainly at least, asymptotical 
progress. Its movement toward that one far-oflf divine event 
is at least the living logic of its transformations. Let his- 
torical students have done with this irrational talk about Chris- 
tianity as a mere essence. Let them study historical Chris- 
tianity as a developing form of actuality. Let them take relig- 
ion in its objective, historical, concrete form of creed and cult, 
and discipline and organization; as the manifestation and the 
nurturing of Christian life. 

(i) They will find that ''back to Jesus," means back to a 
Jewish Messiah, the founder of a kingdom of heaven on earth — 
or rather the one, who, as the culmination of the Jewish form 
of the kingdom, sought to fulfill it in higher form. The central 
teaching of Jesus was concerning this fuller coming of the 
kingdom, on earth. The fuller coming of the kingdom was or- 
ganically related with and rooted primarily in the historical re- 
ligion of his own nation. It is the wildest sort of historical in- 
sanity, to read into His words : ''the Kingdom of God is within 
(cvTos) you," a modernized subjective conception of an in- 



94 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

visible kingdom. 'Within you" is historically as well as gram- 
matically to be translated ''in your midst," just as Jesus himself 
was then in their midst. That was the ''good news/' the es- 
sence, if you will, of the gospel. It was a kingdom on earth. 
It was to be objective and social, as we see from most of the 
parables of Jesus. 

(2) They will learn that back to primitive Christianity 
means back to a religious community, founded upon the person 
and work of Jesus and that, not upon the merely historical Jesus 
of Nazareth, who died and was buried, but upon the risen and 
glorified Christ. Not for a moment in the organic life of Chris- 
tianity through the centuries, has it ever rested upon the Jesus of 
history — if the term history be taken in its empirical sense. It 
was not upon the memories of a Jesus who had been, but upon 
relations with a Christ who was then and there, that Christianity 
became a religion. They will also find that creed and polity 
and cult are essential elements of Christianity. 

(3) Then they will trace all the historical transformations of 
this primitive form of Christianity, as stages of development of 
its fullness and totality of life; stages of development of this 
religious movement within the Jewish religion into the form 
and power of a universal religion. They will acknowledge 
the impossibility of any living institution forever keeping its 
primitive undeveloped form. They will then cease to regard 
the whole development of the organization, doctrine and wor- 
ship of Christianity as foreign to its essence, or as a progressive 
degeneration. Their only care will be to see how the Church 
has always had at heart the continuity of concrete Christianity in 
its expansive forms of life in new ages and circumstances. In a 
word, they will treat the history of Christianity as they would 
treat any other religion or institution, under the concept of de- 
velopment rather than under that of degeneracy. Christianity 
never has been a mere essence, a soul without a body, a mind 
without a creed, a will without a deed. Like all life it institutes 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 95 

and organizes itself and adapts its environment to itself — else it 
dies. 

Christianity then is, for the historical student, that which the 
Church has thought and done through the centuries of its 
existence. 

If they cannot accept Christianity's own interpretation of 
itself; if they have not a philosophy of history that will justify 
its expanding forms of life, they will at least treat it as a de- 
velopment of one phase of the psychological necessity for men 
to be religious, though a psychological necessity need not be 
a rational necessity. Christianity's own interpretation is, in 
brief, the following: The Eternal Son of God, the Eternal, 
immanent Logos was incarnated in Jesus. He entered per- 
sonally into the limitations of human life — lived, worked, taught, 
died, was buried, rose again from the dead, was excarnated and 
glorified. But the living Christ established a kingdom, sent the 
Holy Spirit to inspire and enlighten in the work of upbuilding 
this kingdom. His divine work is continued in and through the 
historical media of his earthly kingdom. That kingdom is not a 
body without a soul. Christ is its soul — an ever living, ever 
present, ever working Christ. Nor is it a soul without a body. 
It is an extension of the incarnation. What the body of Jesus 
was to the incarnate Logos, that his kingdom has ever continued 
to be, a progressive reincarnation of the perfect man. Its limi- 
tations are those common to every historical form of existence, 
just as the body of Jesus was subject to the limits of temporal 
existence — limits as to health, life, omniscience, omnipotence. 
The child Jesus "grew and waxed strong in spirit," he ''in- 
creased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man."^ 
He was subject unto his parents,^ was made ''perfect through 
sufferings."^ So, too, the Church on earth, while never identify- 
ing itself with the Church triumphant, has ever held herself 

^ St. Luke's Gospel, II, vv. 40 and 52 

^Ibid., V. 51. 

^ Epistle to the Hebrews, II, v. 10. 



96 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

to be the earthly medium for the continuous inworking of the 
Logos into humanity. She has sought to be a religion of au- 
thority, because she tries to express and spread abroad the relig- 
ion of the Spirit, under historical limitations. She has had no 
other motive for her existence than the preservation and propa- 
gation of the gospel — the good news of a kingdom of God on 
earth. Often she has been untrue to her own principles, un- 
faithful to her trust and degenerate in her life. But she has the 
perpetual presence of the Logos to recall her from her wander- 
ings and reform her of her abuses. Her belief in the perpetual 
presence of the living Christ is vastly different from that of any 
merely idealized memories of an historical, a dead Jesus, how- 
ever uniquely religious and holy he may have been. She has 
ever regarded herself only as a vestibule to the perfected 
kingdom, hence as a provisional and transitional and develop- 
ing organization; recognizing that the working of the imma- 
nent Logos is subject to all the conditions of historical exist- 
ence. Her cry has never been ''back to a past Christ," but 
rather that of ''life in the present Christ and, through this, 
forward into the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ," gradually "increasing in wisdom and stature and in 
favor with God and man." 

Such, briefly, is the Church's interpretation of itself. Such 
is its philosophy of Christian history. Then the Church justifies 
her own existence and rationalizes her own authority as an 
ecclesia doc ens, the earthly medium or body for housing and 
educating and extending the religious relation of man — ^or rather 
of men, with God. For in no historical form has she ever taken 
the purely subjective, individualistic view held by Harnack and 
Sabatier. The Church has always been a social institution, a 
corporate body, with corporate aims, creeds and worship. 

However little the empirical form of the historical method^ 
can accept the Church's own interpretation of herself, it is bound 
to treat the Church as it does any other form of a developing 
" Cf. Chap. IV, p. 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 97 

institution. But that is what neither Harnack nor Sabatiet 
does. Their method resembles that of an anatomist of a dead 
body, or, at best, that of a student of biology, faulting the 
growing form for changing; faulting the full grown man for 
not having remained a child, every stage of growth being ab- 
normal, and the whole process a putrefaction, or at best a petri- 
faction. 

With the philosophical form of the historical method^ all the 
facts as to the various transformations of Christianity which 
they bring out, are fully accepted. All the results of Biblical 
criticism, of historical investigations, of modern culture in gen- 
eral are approved, so far as they are proved. But the interpre- 
tation of these facts is vastly different. The exponents of this 
other school have an optimistic, because they have a rational, 
philosophy of history. The world is not a progressionless pro- 
cession nowheres in particular. It is not an eternal identity of 
a fixed sum of matter or force always equated in every form of 
their changes. The rather it is a process, through, and to the 
rational. The physical and the mechanical are imbedded in the 
metaphysical and teleological. Or rather the metaphysical is 
immanent in the physical. There is logic, reason in its full con- 
crete sense, in all history. History is a development towards 
something — a far-off divine consummation. This final destina- 
tion is an immanent final cause, the only efficient cause that any- 
one reading history as rational can assume. 

Science now dispenses with any efficient causality. Philos- 
ophy restores the abandoned concept of causality under the form 
of final cause. The history of man thus viewed, is a process 
that is a progress into freedom, because it is a process into ra- 
tionality — a process of man's freedom to act, not as he pleases, 
but in accordance with the authority of reason ; a process of man 
into the freedom of God's service. 

Just what reason is, what are the forms of God's service may, 
historically, vary ; nay must vary, in a process which is a devel- 
^ Cf. Chap. IV of this volume. 

7 



98 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

opment. The spirit is ever, historically, in a body ; the Logos 
is ever, historically, incarnated. The philosophic form of the 
historical method then seeks the logic, the reason, the ever in- 
creasing manifestation of its first constitutive principle in his- 
torical forms. It views the history of the sons of men becoming, 
corporately, the sons of God ; as an education of the race under 
the Divine Pedagogue. It studies the history of all human 
achievements as the outerances, under historical limitations, of 
the immanent Logos. It studies the specifically sacred in the 
same way that it does the nominally secular. It studies the his- 
tory of religion, and the history of every religion in the same 
genetic way. 

When it comes to Christianity, it falters not in seeing it or- 
ganically related to other religions and, much less, at seeing the 
logic, the reason in all its historical transformations. It takes 
up all its empirical events — the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the 
founding of a Jewish sect, the Hellenization of this sect, the 
Romanizing and the Germanizing of it. It takes Christianity to 
be what it has become through all these historical transforma- 
tions, as a developed form of primitive Christianity. Refusing 
to read any history as merely secular, much less does it refuse to 
read Christian history as being alogical. It accepts, as material 
for its interpretation, all that modern research and criticism have 
to offer as proved. But it declines their merely empirical analy- 
sis when presented as the synthesis, the life, the soul, the reason 
of the whole process. It declines mere individualism in favor 
of the corporate view of man in his religious relation, as well 
as in his specific relation to intellectual reason. 

Neither religion nor abstract reason is a private possession or 
acquisition. Both are social, corporate products. And both 
are validated only under the metaphysic of an immanent princi- 
ple or Logos in the historical processes of their attainment. 
Unassisted reason in the individual is a fiction. So, too, is unas- 
sisted religion. But corporate forms of both are validated only 
by a sufficient final cause. The merely phenomenal causes of 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 99 

empirical facts are never sufficient causes. Non-rational, and 
non-moral, and non-religious, phenomenal causes can never val- 
idate reason nor morality nor religion. In their corporate forms 
they must still be incorporated into the superphenomenal, the 
metaphysical, the First and Final Cause to be seen even as 
progressive forms of reason. 

In some form, the conception of the incarnation of the Divine 
Logos, some conception of the immanent energizing in the 
process of a transcendent First Cause, must be used in interpret- 
ing any phenomenal change as a development. Still even, the 
end is not yet. The actual in any process is not yet the rational, 
and yet every form of the empirical actual is a phase of the 
rational, or else we must throw away the whole conception of 
evolution. We cannot, then, take the twentieth century view of 
what is scientific or rational as ultimate. The fortieth century, 
perhaps the twenty-first century, may pronounce as severe judg- 
ment upon the views of modern culture and science as we do 
upon those of the Middle Ages. Doubtless we are not the 
people and wisdom will not perish with us. Doubtless we are 
"foremost in the files of time," yet we 

**Doubt not through the ages one increasing ^urposo, runs, 

And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns." 

The Zeitgeist of any Zeit is temporal. It has its truth and 
reality only as a phase of the immanent Logos in an historical 
process, but the end is not yet. And yet the present is, only be- 
cause the Absolute is ; because it is a phase of the absolute in 
historical process. 

Here we are brought face to face with a choice of Hercules. 
We have a process. But a process of what and to what ? If we 
take modern science in the metaphysical sense of some of its ex- 
pounders, we have a process of change of a fixed lot of empirical 
factors ; that is, a change of the collocations of these factors, 
matter, force, ether, electrons — a convolution, a devolution, a 
transformation, but eternally the same old realities — old friends 
or foes with new faces. Identity reigns. Difference is logically 



L.ofC. 



100 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

bowed out, and we are in a world of process which is chaos 
instead of Cosmos. The cyclic theory of the Stoics is the ut- 
most possible. Things, institutions, rise, ripen and rot, and 
then the process begins anew. There is nothing new under the 
sun, at least nothing new that shall not be resolved into the 
old — the eterr:illy real matter, or force, or electrons, or the 
fixed quantity of physical energy in the physical universe. 
Farewell then to any centuries' statement of reason or reality. 
Farewell alas ! to our twentieth century view. Farewell, in 
fact, to reason, if reason be not immanent in all the physical 
and historical processes of the universe. To this pass, all mod- 
ern scientific metaphysics is brought. There is no possible 
avoiding the Issue. Either immanent reason^ Logos or final 
cause is in the process, or the process is processionless, or at 
best cyclic. 

The other choice is the philosophical one — that reason, final 
cause, efficient purpose is immanent in all phenomenal changes, 
causal of these changes being a development — a process towards 
a goal, stages in humanity's realization of its real self, phases 
of rationality and of reality in the process. 

Under this philosophical conception, theUj every phase of 
actuality must pass for judgment as to its validity. Religion is 
certainty one of the phenomena of history. I mean by religion, 
not the subjective feeling in the heart, but an objective, his- 
torical, concrete form of human activity. Christianity is a 
positive, historical form of religion, claiming to be ultimate 
in its principles, but only relative in its development. Can the 
claim be validated? Certainly not on the view of empirical 
metaphysics. In fact, nothing can be validated — not even the 
views of modern science and culture. All are but meaningless 
transformations of irrational elements. 

What validation, if any validation there can be, on the philo- 
sophical standpoint ? The claim of actual Christianity, that is, 
of historical Christianity, is modest enough. It is only the 
claim to be the relative realization, in historical processes, of 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY loi 

the Absolute religion. It is only the claim to be the organic, 
corporate, foremost phase in religion. It is only the claim 
to be the ever expanding form — the ever growing incarnation 
of the religious relation of humanity to its primal source and 
final end. Even its creedal claims are all in the sphere of the 
process. Its quod ubique, quod semper et quod ab omnibus 
creditum est, hoc est proprieque catholicum, is always pro- 
fessedly within the realm of development — static stages of a 
dynamic process, and hence never absolutely infallible and ulti- 
mate. 

To read Christian history in the light of this philosophical 
view, is simply an attempt to trace the concrete logic in a mass of 
phenomenal events — a mass of feelings, fancy, imagination, of 
human creeds and deeds — of phenomenal facts. It is to take re- 
ligion concretely — to take Christianity historically, objectively, 
externally, if you will, and then to interpret it rationally, as the 
highest phase of religious actuality. It is not to take some ab- 
stract, subjective, individualistic feeling: some modern's en- 
lighted view as to its essence. For it has always been too potent 
to be mere essence. It has always been forceful enough to be a 
manifestation ; to be a visible actuality. It has always been a 
corporate, institutional concrete form of phenomenal actuality. 
It has always been something objective, of which the scientific 
and historical student can take cognizance. It stands forth in 
the phenomenal world on a par with all the political and social in- 
stitutions of humanity. As such, it submits to the same rational 
criticism. How much reason in it, how much reality ? Not how 
much abstract reason of the eighteenth or the twentieth century, 
but how much of the absolute Reason does it embody, incarnate, 
manifest? Concretely and historically, it consists of creed and 
polity and cult, as all religions have done. Concretely, it has 
been corporate, not individualistic. Concretely, it has been a 
development, not a fixed identical quantity. Concretely, it has 
been — well, let us say life — but a life that has not been mere 
essence, but a life with a body. It has been a life that has 



102 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

mingled with, and modified all the concrete relations of man — 
his domestic, social, political; his artistic and philosophical ac- 
tivities. It has been a forceful force, a potent potency. Organ- 
ized, as all life is organized, it has yet spread its organic fila- 
ments into art, literature, politics — into all the truly human 
forms of self-activity. No merely modern enlightened form of 
culture can pick out an abstract element and call it the essence 
of Christianity. Its attempt to do so must de-rationalize all its 
work. Christianity is what it is. It is what it is, because of 
what it has become. But, finally, it has become what it is not, 
because of phenomenal cause, which are now eviscerated of 
real causality in science, but because of the final cause ; because 
of the goal; because of the immanence of this cause in phe- 
nomenal processes. Aut Caesar aut nullius. Either the em- 
pirical or the philosophical conception of reason and rational- 
ity ; either the mechanical or the teleological conception of na- 
ture and of man and his history. The teleological easily ac- 
cepts, takes up and fulfills the mechanical, but the rnechanical 
can never take up and fulfill the teleological. The war is to the 
knife, disguise it as we may with our ephemeral reconciliations 
of religion with science. Aut Caesar aut nullius. Either meta- 
physical science or scientific metaphysics. That it is the ques- 
tion narrowed to a point. It is the choice of Hercules. It is 
the choice between reason and unreason, between fate and free- 
dom, between relative gnosticism and absolute agnosticism. 
Let the issue be plainly stated. Let the empirical scientific 
metaphysic be not glossed with conceptions of an anthro- 
pomorphic nature ; let the rigorous scientific view of reason and 
reality be stated in bald, actual form, and the choice then be- 
comes a pro and con, between a logical and an alogical prin- 
ciple; between, let us say plainly, between a divine process in 
temporal conditions, and a fortuitous concourse of atoms, a 
fortuitous change within empirical matter, force, ether, elec- 
trons or whatever the latest empirical analysis may show to be 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 103 

the one phenomenal reahty, masquerading under the diverse 
forms of nature and humanity. 

We are brought to the pass either to hold that science is 
merely descriptive of phenomenal changes for a practical end, 
having nothing to say about ultimate reality, as its foremost 
representatives grant, or to hold that science is unhumani- 
tarian and atheistic. There is no possible dodging of the issue. 
Aut Caesar ant ntilliits, say both empirical and philosophical 
metaphysics. Let those who are afflicted with the ailments of 
modern culture; with their hesitancy, say, to be religious, not 
be caught by the glamour thrown over their metaphysics by 
some popularizers of science. Instead of taking modern sci- 
ence for what it is, let them take it as metaphysics. Then let 
them have the courage of their convictions and the confessions 
of Physicus^ will be their confession — their creed, in the light 
of which beauty, goodness and truth cease to have any real 
reahty. As students of the objective, we are not concerned 
merely with the religious interpretation of experience ; but with 
the philosophical view, in the light of which nature and man 
and all human institutions are to receive their evaluations. 
This view comes, by reflective analysis of concrete experience, 
to something above any empirically given factors. It rises 
from the dependent to the independent, from the passively 
causal to the causa stii, from the part to the whole, from the 
phenomenal to the noumenal, from the mechanical to the Final 
Cause, from the irrational to the Absolutely Rational, from the 
chaos in whatever transitory form it may assume, to Cosmos, 
and from Cosmos, let us say frankly, to an immanent Logos 
that is also a transcendent Deity. The dialectic of all forms 
of reason, of all categories of finite thought force us to this 
ultimate category of absolute concrete reason — God. Or the 
penalty is that of reversion to the Oriental conception — Brahm, 
the Unconscious, the unknown Unknowable of Spencer. 

Thought is capable of the ascensio mentis ad Deum. Plato 

^ Cf. Appendix. Note 4. 



J04 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

has shown this in his Republic (Bks. VI and VII) and Aristotle 
in his Metaphysics (Book XI). In fact this is the contention 
of all positive, catholic philosophy. All men acknowledge 
grades of knowing. Science passes far beyond the stage of 
sense-perception. It uses the relating categories of the under- 
standing in its marvelous work of describing the physical uni- 
verse as such. Philosophy goes on to study the presuppositions 
of such a description. The limits of physics demand a meta- 
physic. The temporal, the spatial and all things therein are, as 
such, finite. The finite implies the infinite — is only finite in 
virtue of the infinite. All admit this, but the parting of ways is 
at the question of knozving this implicate of the finite. Spencer 
asserts its existence, power and universality but denies that it is 
knowable ; denies that thought has any power to transcend the 
finite. Knowledge is confined to the limits of the sensuous 
by Kant in his First Critique, and he never gets beyond the 
maintenance of the faculty of faith as the organ of communica- 
tion with God and spiritual realities. Faith is not a potency of 
reason and so cannot give knowledge. This negative side of 
Kant is the side that is taken by the Neo-Kantianer — ^by those 
who have raised the cry of "Back to Kant," back from philos- 
ophy to agnosticism — ^back to agnostic realism of sensuous phe- 
nomena from the realism of the Absolute Reason. 

The root difficulty with both Sabatier and Harnack is that 
they have been caught with this Neo-Kantian agnosticism. We 
cannot know God. Knowledge is only of the sensuous. We 
can only feel and believe in the Unknowable Absolute as a 
Father. We can act as if there was a God, if it conduces to our 
welfare. We can be pragmatists, not intellectualists, in all the 
higher activities of humanity. In a way, philosophy is to blame 
for this. It is to blame so far as it defines reason as the merely 
abstract reason of the understanding. Against this view of rea- 
son, Kant in his Second Critique, and modern pragmatists are 
right. But when reason is conceived concretely; when know- 
ing is not merely discursive ; when thought has its full sweep, 



SABATIER, HARNACK AND LOISY 105 

all that agnostics and pragmatists contend for is allowed. Phi- 
losophy, as such, is only the most concrete rational knowledge 
of the same data that sense and science deal with. It is a 
knowledge of their implications and necessary presuppositions. 
The ultimate presupposition of all finite knowledge is absolute 
knowledge ; of all finite reality, absolute reality ; of all finite 
consciousness, absolute Self-consciousness. And this pre-sup- 
position is knowable by thought. Being known, the descent 
from it to an interpretation of the time and space process fol- 
lows as a necessity. It is known as God's world. He is its 
first and final cause. From Him, in Him and towards Him 
all creation lives and moves and has its being. All temporal 
actualities are interpreted sub specie aeternitafis. They are in 
a process from and to the Perfect. The process is teleological. 
It is thus that it is logical. Any other view leaves all knowl- 
edge and reality to be alogical. Any other view turns even 
the gnosticism of sense and science into agnosticism — leaves us 
in the realm of things and relatives and processes, that are 
relative to an unknowable. This of course is alogism, non- 
rationality. Thought out fully and clearly then, we have the in- 
tellectual scepticism of Hume — a scepticism that he applied to 
common sense and science as well as to philosophy. The va- 
lidity of thought, logic, knowledge in any interpretation of the 
universe rests upon the reality of the immanent Logos. It is 
an intellectual surprise when we find Harnack to say, *^the way 
we conceive the world and ethics does not point to the existence 
of any Aoyo? at all."^ This must have been a slip of the pen of a 
ready writer. For w^ith such a conception, all logic is bowed 
out of the world and out of discussions. In fact, the point at 
issue with Harnack is the only point at issue between specula- 
tive thought, and historical Christianity. That point is the iden- 
tification of the eternal Xoyo? with the historical Christ. The 
Church has always made this identification. It was founded 

* Harnack's Essence of Christianity, p. 220. 



io6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

upon it. The doctrine of the Incarnation — the whole of her 
Christology, is the speculative interpretation of Jesus of Nazar- 
eth — not as a ''particular person who appeared in time and space 
relations," but as a particular man who lived and died and was 
buried and rose again — the excarnation completing the process 
begun in the incarnation. Harnack faults the Church here for 
corrupting ''the apostolic heritage with Greek philosophy." 
But if Greek philosophy was also a lesson taught by the same 
Divine Pedagogue that taught the Jews their religion, this in- 
terpretation of Christ was but a unification of knowledge. 
When thought comes to reflect upon the phenomena of history ; 
when it becomes a philosophy of history — the highest intellectual 
interpretation of time and space phenomena — it is compelled 
to deny an immanent Logos and thus commit suicide, or to 
make the identification. 

Thus we find Hegel, the very incarnation of philosophy, 
making the same identification that the Church has done.^ The 
mere personal opinion of Hegel, as well as that of John Stuart 
Mill, is of no worth. It is only a question of speculative 
thought and of its interpretation of the time and space process, 
into a higher form of knowledge than that of mere sense per- 
ception or science. If religion is to be not only a psychological 
experience, but is to receive a rational interpretation and vali- 
dation, we cannot remain on the plane of Neo-Kantian agnosti- 
cism as Sabatier and Harnack do. And we must either simply 
live the Christian life, and abstain from any attempt at intel- 
lectual justification of it, or we must transcend the agnosticism 
that makes any such justification impossible. Sabatier and 
Harnack have done neither. 

^HegeFs Philosophy of History, pp. 336-338. 



CHAPTER III 



LOISY 



From the subjective, non-historical view of Christianity 
given by Sabatier and Harnack, let us turn to the objective 
view presented by Abbe Loisy, in his two volumes.^ 

The first book of this erudite French theologian has been as 
warmly welcomed by many liberal Catholics in Europe, as ex- 
pressing their own view of the Church of their birth and their 
love, as it has been reprobated by the Roman hierarchy. It 
voices the views of the Liberals, who are accused of what ultra- 
montanists stigmatize as ramericanisme — an accusation that 
led to the prohibition of Mivart's views and, finally to his ex- 
communication and death. Uamericanisme has been officially 
condemned, but it is a vigorous and growing school of thought 
in the Roman Catholic Church. It bids fair to become domi- 
nant in the future, unless Rome has forgotten her cunning of 
flexibility and of bowing in due time, to the inevitable. 

Loisy's book is professedly a polemic against Protestantism 
as represented — or rather misrepresented, by Sabatier and 
Harnack. 

Primitive Christianity and modern Christianity are two very 
different things. What is the bond of identity that unites them ? 
That is the common problem of all three writers. As to the 
facts of the transformations of primitive Christianity by histor- 
ical environments, they are all three at practical agreement. 
As to the interpretation of Christianity, as thus transformed by 
successive environments, they are at sword's-point ! Loisy hold- 

^ UEvangile et L'Eglise, Paris, 1902. Autour d'un Petit Livre, 
Paris, 1903. 

107 



io8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

ing it to have been a legitimate development, the others a de- 
generacy. Loisy had been, since 1881, Professor of Hebrew in 
the Institut Catholiqiie in Paris. The students of Saint-Sulpice 
were forbidden to attend his lectures, after the publication of 
his book on ''Chaldean Myths of the Creation and the Deluge." 
In 1893 he was deprived of his chair in the Institut Catholique, 
and appointed chaplain to a girl's school. His health broke 
down. He had to resign his chaplaincy and the meagre salary 
which was his only support. It was during this time that he 
wrote, under the name of Firmin, the articles, of which 
UEvangiJe et UEglise is the ripest result. He had been for- 
bidden to continue these in articles in 1900. 

Finally he was appointed to a chair at the Ecole des Hautes 
Etudes^ where he enjoys academical freedom. At present he is 
said to be the recognized head of an important school of Catholic 
thought, which is making headway in France, Italy, Austria, 
Belgium, and the United States. 

Like Sabatier, Loisy finds it *'a psychological necessity to 
bring his religious consciousness into harmony with his general 
culture.'' With Sabatier religion is his inner religous feeling, 
while with Loisy it is religion on its objective, institutional side. 
He accepts, like Sabatier and Harnack, the general results of 
the most advanced historical and Biblical criticism. Loisy says 
that he has chosen Cardinal Newman for his guide. He takes 
up again Newman's idea of the development of Christianity, in 
order to oppose the views of Sabatier and Harnack. His own 
work lacks the personal interest and the special pleading form 
of Newman's. He writes as an historian, not as Newman did, 
with the soul of a religous devotee and a scholastic partisan. 
To read Newman's book to-day is a task of drudgery, enlivened 
only by the humor of his supposing himself to have the judicial 
temper, the historical sense and sound logic. But he is quite 
devoid of both the historical spirit and method, that are so evi- 
dent in the work of Loisy. Newman refers to De Maistre and 
Moeller as using the same principle, i. e., ''that the increase and 



LOISY 109 

expansion of the Christian creed and ritual, and the variations 
that have attended the process in the case of individual writers 
and churches, are the necessary attendants on any philosophy or 
policy which takes possession of the intellect and heart, and has 
had any wide or extended dominion ; that, from the nature of 
the human mind, time is necessary for the full comprehension 
and perfection of great ideas; and that the highest and most 
wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for 
all by inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once 
by the recipients, but, as received and transmitted by minds not 
inspired and through media which were human, have required 
only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucida- 
tion. This may be called the Theory of Development/'^ 

In Chapter I Newman lays down as distinctive tests be- 
tween Development and Corruption : 

(i) Preservation of Type or Idea. 

(2) Continuity of Principles. 

(3) Power of Assimilation. 

(4) Early Anticipation. 

(5) Logical Sequence. 

(6) Preservative Additions. 

(7) Chronic Continuance. 

Then follows the application of these tests in an absolutely 
unhistorical way — ^the quoting of this and that Father, or 
Church decree — i. e., the dogmatic method of using uncritically 
whatever tradition seems good to illustrate and thus prove (^sic) 
the thesis in hand. 

Loisy's first book is professedly a polemical criticism of the 
point of view of Harnack and Sabatier. Against their con- 
stant contention that nearly every step forward in the history 
of the Church, has been an apostasy from the pure essence, he 
maintains that these steps constitute, for the historian, the mani- 
festation of the real essence of Christianity. 

^ Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 27. 



no THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

It is needless to go into detail as to the historical transfor- 
mation of the meagre remnant of the Gospel history, allowed 
to be genuine by all three of these writers. Loisy looks on 
these transformations as natural and necessary developments, 
as those of the tree from the seed and environment. With 
Harnack and Sabatier, the favorite metaphor for describing 
these transformations, is that of a stream issuing from a pure 
fountain, being discolored and polluted by the soils through 
which it flows, and by the uncongenial waters of the tributaries 
that flow into it. We may admit that, in one point of view, the 
Christianity of men has always been profoundly inferior to the 
personal religion of Jesus. This praise is accorded to Jesus by 
even those who regard him as purely human, and deny the 
whole ecclesiastical interpretation of the Person and work of 
the Christ as Saviour and Redeemer of men. Certainly every 
form of Christianity to-day, differs from that of the Gospels. 
And each one must either justify itself, or an absolute return 
be made to the most primitive form — an historical and moral 
impossibility. 

As to the facts of the Gospel story, Loisy allows much of 
our Gospels to be an idealization of Jesus and his words and 
works, produced spontaneously in the consciousness of his 
disciples. An atmosphere of faith and love was the source of 
the idealized Jesus that we find in the Gospels. In his second 
book he refers to the Old Testament miracles which he says, 
''the historian can only recognize as memories, idealized by 
faith,"^ and adds that a like historical criticism is to be ap- 
plied to the New Testament.^ Thus he leaves as few shreds of 
genuine history as to the words and works of Jesus as do the 
others. His destructive criticism of the Gospel is more fully 
set forth in his view of the unhistoricity of most of the Fourth 
Gospel. Thus he says that ''the narratives of St. John are not 
a history, but a mystic contemplation of the Evangelist; his 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 41. 
^The same^ p. 43. 



LOISY III 

discourses are theological meditations upon the mystery of 
salvation."^ Again, ''the Fourth Gospel is a book of mystical 
theology where one hears the voice, not of the historic Christ, 
but that of the Christian consciousness."^ 

His difference from them is in his method of interpreting 
these facts, in the course of their historical effects.^ 

In Chapter II of his first book we find his most important 
divergence from the others, as to the idea of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. While they make it to be within the soul of the disci- 
ple, he lays stress on the assumption of the Messianic role by 
Jesus. He thinks that Jesus took an objective view of this 
kingdom, and throws doubt on the authenticity of the words 
''the Kingdom of God is within you," (St. Luke, xviii, 21),* 
allowing that at best "within" (ci/tos) should be translated 
''amongst" or "in the midst," au milieu, in which he is correct. 
The Gospel is subordinated to the kingdom, as the sphere in 
which it is to grow. Pardon, peace and love are means of 
entrance into this objective kingdom. 

But he protests that "the historian ought to resist the temp- 
tation to modernize the idea of the kingdom."^ 

The historic Jesus was a Jew, and held the Jewish concep- 
tion of the Messianic kingdom, though gradually purifying it ; 
which purification he continued after his resurrection and as- 
cension (in the hearts and minds of his disciples). For I can- 
not find that Loisy allows more to the resurrection and glorifi- 
cation of Jesus, than an act of faith in the souls of his bereaved 
disciples.^ He practically agrees with Harnack in distinguish- 
ing between the Easter message and the Easter faith. The 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 93. 

'P. 130. 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre. pp. 61-68. 

* UEvangile et UEglise, p. 55. 

^ The same, p. 56. 

® Cf. UEvangile et VEglise, 117-123. 



112 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

message is, an empty tomb, "He is not here/' and the faith is, 
"He is risen." There is no proof of the corporal resurrection 
of Jesus that is vaHd, from the historical point of view. It was 
in the atmosphere of faith in the souls of the disciples, that we 
must seek Easter faith — "He is risen." "I believe that I have 
demonstrated that the resurrection of the Saviour is not a fact 
of history, as was the terrestrial life of Christ."^ Again he de- 
nies that the Divinity of Christ can be proved from the Gospels. 
He attributes some of the supposed proof texts to later idealiza- 
tions of his disciples, and others he interprets in the light of 
Jesus' messianic role. The Jesus of history lived and died as 
Messiah. He rose again as Lord, Saviour, Son of God, Logos 
and God — in the faith of his disciples and in the interpretation 
of the Church during the first four centuries. "The question in 
the time of Jesus was not, Ts He God,' but 'Is He the Mes- 
siah ?' The Divinity of Christ is a dogma which has grown in 
the Christian consciousness, but which was not expressly formu- 
lated in the Gospels. It existed solely in the germ, in the notion 
of the Messiah, Son of God."^ 

Loisy makes much of the atmosphere of faith in the early 
community. This loving faith of bereaved disciples made of 
him all that is beyond the historical, pious Jew, who essayed the 
role of the Messiah. The risen Jesus was an object of faith 
(un objet de foi), not a historical phenomenon.^ 

The narratives of the infancy of Jesus, including that of the 
Virgin birth, cannot be regarded as historical memories, but 
only as memories, transfigured by loving disciples.* In fact 
everything in the New Testament that is attributed to the risen 
Jesus, is frankly stated to spring from this idealizing faith in 
the hearts of the disciples. This must be, he maintains, the 
point of view of the historian. But going beyond this, he af- 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 169. 

^Ibid., p. 117. 

^ Ibid., p. 227. 

* UEvangile et L'Eglise, 29-31. 



LOISY 113 

firms the legitimacy of this idealization of Jesus. The historian 
can only note the faith of the early community and its develop- 
ments through the ages. He need be neither an apologist or an 
adversary. The whole of the doctrine, polity and cult of the 
Church, is the expression of the developing interpretation of 
the historical Jewish Messiah. The object of this faith is at no 
stage of its development, for the historian, a factual reality (une 
realite de fait). It is a religious interpretation of historical 
facts.^ 

The resurrection of Jesus, not being a fact for the historian, 
must be accepted as an act of faith on the part of the primitive 
community of disciples. The same living faith of the commu- 
nity goes on to found the Church, propound doctrines, and es- 
tablish forms of worship in the name of the glorified Christ 
The Church speaks the mind of Christ. The Church is his body 
— ^the extension of the incarnation in secular conditions — it 
speaks from faith and to faith. 

After this faith had raised and glorified Jesus, the idealizing 
process goes on in a necessary and legitimate course of develop- 
ment. The Church continued the idealizing process as to the 
person and work of Christ till the council of Nicea, where he 
became, "Very God of Very God ; begotten, not made ; being of 
one substance {ofxoova-iav ) with the Father," which is a tran- 
scendental explanation of an historical fact."^ But this was the 
natural, necessary and valid development of the Gospel of Jesus, 
Thus Loisy accepts en bloc the whole authoritative teaching of 
the Roman Catholic Church. He looks upon it as the rational 
explication and development of the primitive Gospel, adapted to 
the changing times and needs of men. Apparently there is no 
sign of scepticism, of an arriere pensee, in any of his writings 
that would lead one to suppose him to be other than a loyal, and 
devoted and submissive member of the Roman Catholic Church. 

^ L'Evangile et VEglise, 31-32. 
^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, 148. 
8 



114 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

The others, while taking the same view of the historical facts in 
all their development, make it the ground for protesting against 
historical Christianity, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic. 
They will have only the personal religion of the Jewish re- 
former, and, for the individual, only the subjective experience 
of ''God and the soul, and the soul and its God, as the sole 
contents of the Gospel." 

Loisy is just as frank, when he comes to treat of the histor- 
ical side of the foundation and growth of the Church. Religion 
cannot live and be propagated on earth, without a religious or- 
ganization. The Church has been the body of the glorified 
Saviour. He treats the Church as the development, by the 
Christian community, of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. 
He expressly denies that the historical Jesus founded and or- 
ganized a Church, setting aside all the proof-texts usually cited 
from the New Testament. ''The institution of the Church by 
the resurrected Christ is not a tangible fact for the historian.'* 
Historically it started with "the rupture of the new religion with 
Judaism,"^ of which the historical Jesus had always remained 
a conforming member. "The Church was not only the inevit- 
able, but the legitimate outcome of the Gospel."^ "The Church 
to-day resembles the primitive community, but only as an adult 
man resembles a new born babe."^ All development implies 
change. It is not in the cradle one seeks for the actual man, 
and yet there is an identity persisting through all the growth of 
the babe into manhood. He protests against the view of the 
others as an abstraction, when they want the pure essence — the 
kernel without the husk, the soul without a body. 

"The intentions of the Church are, for the believers, the in- 
tentions of the Immortal Christ. "^ * One sees, without diffi- 
culty, that the Church has not been founded nor the Sacraments 
instituted, strictly speaking, except by the glorified Saviour. 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, 171, 172. 

^ Ihid,, p. xxvii. 

^ UEvangile et L'Eglise, p. 160. 



LOISY lis 

It follows that the institution of the Church and Sacraments by 
Christ, like the glorification of Jesus itself, is an object of faith, 
not of historical demonstration."^ 

But as he holds that ''Christ is God for faith," though the 
deification of Jesus has its historical process of three centuries, 
so he holds to the infallible authority of the Church and of the 
Pope, reached through centuries of Christian life and thought. 
''What has been acquired has been acquired," though the end is 
not yet. He looks forward to future modifications of the 
Church's doctrine and cult, to meet the needs of new times and 
new thought.^ 

"Thus, for the historian, who limits himself to the consid- 
eration of observable facts, it is the faith in Christ that has 
founded the Church ; from the point of view of this faith, it is 
Christ himself, living for the faith, and accomplishing for it 
that which the historian sees realized."^ 

His historical treatment of the growth of dogmas differs 
little from that of Harnack. Scarcely any of the accepted 
dogmas are to be found in the New Testament. They have 
been made by the mind of the Church, formulating its Chris- 
tian consciousness. 

As an historian he sees the influence of Greek philosophy, 
Roman law and other changing environments, as factors of this 
development of the Church and her dogmas and cult. 

That which interests Protestants most is his last chapter on 
''The Catholic Culf and the chapter in his second book on 
''The Institution of the (seven) Sacraments/^ 

He rightly says that "History knows of no instance of a re- 
ligion without a cult, and consequently Christian ritual should 
cause no surprise. But one easily conceives that if the essence 
of Christianity is such as M. Harnack has defined, such a pure 
Christianity excludes all external forms of worship. That 

* Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 227. 

^ Ci.Autour d'un Petit Livre, pp. 155. UEvangile et UEglise, p. 203. 

^Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 172. 



ii6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

would be a peculiar religion, designed for a legion of angels, 
of which every individual constitutes a separate species, and not 
for men destined to live together on earth/'^ 

Every religion is sacramental. Christianity without*cult, is 
at best a mystic philosophy, like Neo-Platonism. The historic 
Jesus did not institute these forms of worship. He used the 
Jewish cult. But as soon as Christianity grew to be a separate 
religion, it had need of a new cult adapted to its religious ideas 
and wants. A cult was necessary to its life and propagation. 
To be propagated in other nations, it was necessary for it to 
adopt more or less of their forms of worship. Thus the cult 
grew as it conformed to the special conditions of .nascent 
Christianity. ''Suppose that one can prove the pagan origin of 
a number of Christian rites, these rites ceased to be pagan when 
they were accepted and interpreted by the Church. Suppose 
that the great development of the worship of the saints, of relics, 
of the Virgin, are due in some ways to a pagan influence, it is 
not to be condemned solely on account of this origin,"^ To be 
a universal religion, Christianity must needs put off its Jewish 
form and adapt itself to the language, ideas and forms of other 
peoples. Converted Gentiles not only obtained a dispensation 
from the Jewish rite of circumcision, but they also were able to 
preserve many of their own rites on condition of their having a 
Christian interpretation of them. Otherwise Christianity could 
never have converted the nations.^ Sacraments are naturally 
and morally necessary means of grace in any religion. ''They 
are the expression of the inner religion, and the means of com- 
munication with God. The meaning of sacramental symbols is 
determined by the historical circumstances of their institution 
and their usage. Their efficacy comes from their being means 
of grace as words are means of expression of thought."^ They 

^UEvangile et VEgUse, p. 121. 
^Ibid,, p. 231. 
^ Ibid., p. 233-5. 
^Ihid,, p. 260. 



LOISY 117 

symbolize and realize, for the Christian, the perpetual action of 
Christ in the Church."^ Loisy also advises that the Catholic 
Church modify her cult somewhat, to meet the needs of the 
modern world, without repudiating the transmitted heritage of 
the Christian past. 

Again, we note his contention that the cult was gradually 
instituted by the Church. The historical Jesus instituted no 
sacraments. ''The institution of Baptism was by the glorified 
Saviour, that is to say, the Gospel itself testifies that the rite 
was born in the apostolic community."^ So as to the Mass. 
The Last Supper, as recorded in the Gospel, was a Jewish Mes- 
sianic feast, but it became the germ from which the glorified 
Jesus, through his disciples and their converts, finally instituted 
the Mass. Thus ''only the pious imagination of a naive faith 
could picture St. Peter saying Mass pontifically the day after 
the resurrection."^ 

Thus far we have presented chiefly the negative side of 
Loisy's teaching, finding his historical criticism of a developed 
Church differing but little from that of Sabatier and Harnack. 
The positive side of his teaching is, that there is no soul on 
earth without a body, and no soul and body that are not in a 
process of development. Thus he would answer Harnack's 
question, "What is Christianity," by saying, that it is the his- 
torical Church, — an organism of soul and body, developing 
through the ages. So, too, he would answer Sabatier by say- 
ing, that there never has been a "Religion of the Spirit" apart 
from a "Religion of Authority." 

"The essence of Christianity" or "the pure Gospel" has 
never existed as an abstraction, apart from the color of time 
and place and environment in which it has taken form. It can 
never, historically, be separated from the Christian community. 
It was born and has lived in a communal organization. As the 

' P. 278. 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 229. 

* Cf. Autour d'un Petit Livre, pp. 237 -45. 



ii8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

human body is modified by what it takes up from its food and 
environment, so has the Church been modified by its environ- 
ment. The influence of environment in producing variations 
in the form, color and habits of animals is now one of the 
recognized principles of biology. Environment is the source of 
change, and change of development, and development of the re- 
alization of what was merely potential or the supposed essence 
of a thing. The actuality is always more than the essence. 
Christianity is what the Gospel has become on earth and under 
temporal conditions. It has always been changing. 

Now it is to history that Loisy looks for the causes of these 
changes, these variations, these developments. He seeks to un- 
derstand a dogma, institution or cult, by learning the historical 
circumstances through which it has become what it is. He 
seeks to preserve the body which preserves the soul ; while Sab- 
atier and Harnack seek to preserve the soul without the body of 
Christianity, for with them the creeds, polity and cult of the 
Church have all been peeled off and nothing is left of Christi- 
anity, but a filial feeling in the soul of the believer towards its 
heavenly Father ; unmediated by rites and creeds and deeds of 
the Church. 

This at least appears on the surface, to be the interpreta- 
tion given to the Gospel and the Church by M. Loisy. But a 
critical reading of his two volumes awakens a doubt as to this 
larger and more concrete view. One finds in fact two discon- 
nected developments with no organic relation between them. 
There is the same historical development traced in almost the 
identical language of Harnack and Sabatier. And there is also 
the development of the faith, the inward essence of the re- 
ligion going on to expand its interpretation of itself — a super- 
historical process. Acts of faith and objects of faith, idealiza- 
tions of facts, transcendental facts, are here the materials and 
the potencies that give us an extra-historical development. 

The causal or the reciprocal relation between the two is not 
made apparent. The soul is not clearly shown as active in 



LOISY 119 

adapting the environments to its own life, nor are the environ- 
ments looked at as causal of the soul — the faith of the Church. 
At most it is a case of casual parallelism, based upon the same ag- 
nosticism — the same incompetency of knowledge in the spiritual 
realm, that is the basis of both Sabatier's and Harnack's views. 
It is an appeal from knowledge to faith. The only advance in 
rationality made by Loisy, is making the appeal to communal 
faith rather than to that of the individual. This is truly an ad- 
vance. With Harnack it is ever a question of the faith of the 
individual soul and its God, unmediated by that of the com- 
munal soul. He sets aside all mediations as impertinent ob- 
trusions between the soul and its God, and retires to the oracle 
within for private audience with Him, thus dismissing all forms 
of communal authority for the individual. God must be to 
each individual that which his own inner oracle gives. The 
logical result is that '^de deis non disputandum est'' 

It is a case of individual anthropomorphization of subjective 
feeling or faith, rather than a communal one. Just so far as 
the social, the corporate view of man is truer than the abstract 
individual view,^ so far is Loisy's view truer than Harnack's. 

Let Harnack blot out, and un-relate himself from all the in- 
terpretations of the primitive Christian community; from all 
the creeds, deeds and cult of the Church ; from the whole of the 
Christian sentiment and culture in which he has been bathed 
from his earliest years, and he would probably find the oracle 
within bespeaking a primitive form of nature-worship, and him- 
self worshiping a stock or stone or sun instead of a heavenly 
Father. Without the mediation, the authority of a communal 
Christian life of eighteen centuries, he would not even have the 
lofty human ideal of a Christ. 

So far then as Loisy stands for a Christianity that is the age- 
long self-interpretation and self -objectifying of a communal 
consciousness or faith, so far does he commend his view as giv- 
ing a rational authority for individual faith and action. 
'Cf. Chap. I. 



120 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

But a deeper doubt rises, which applies to both of these two 
views. That doubt arises from the agnostic standpoint of all 
the three writers. We cannot know God. 

Then, though religion be a psychological necessity and a 
perennial experience of the individual and of the race, there can 
be no rational validation of it. To take the matter at its centre, 
we have only psychological experiences, individual or com- 
munal. At best we can objectify them. We can turn subjec-' 
tive anthropology into objective theology. This was the stand- 
point of Ludwig Feuerbach in his book of the same title as Har- 
nack's, das Wesen Christentums, translated by Marian Evans 
(George Eliot) under the title Essence of Christianity, Here 
all objectivity of God and the Christ of the Church, is derived 
from the self-deification of man and humanity. It is no longer 
God and the soul, but only the soul and its experiences. There 
is no longer question that the risen and glorified Saviour is an 
act of finite spirit. The Catholics, he says, are more logical 
than the Protestants since they objectify and deify not only the 
love of the human father and son, but also a mother's love. God 
is in reality only a self-given affirmative answer to our own 
wishes. 

Feuerbach held that man alone is divine. How then does he 
come to believe in and worship God ? That is an illusion formed 
from the wishes of the heart and poetic imagination. The Gods 
are wish-beings (Wunschwesen) — the wishes and ideals of the 
human heart objectified by the imagination. Man objectifies 
not his empirical self, but his self as he wishes it to be. A 
miracle is an imaginary realization of a supernatural wish.' 
Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the objectification of 
the wishes of the heart. Here we find a most thorough-going 
pragmatism applied to the explanation of objective religion. 

Later, Feuerbach came to take a pessimistic view of this 
objective deification of man's nature. For in it, man gives 
away to God what is really his own highest nature. He 
thus divests himself of that nature, putting it into an im- 



LOISY 121 

aginary God or Christ. The practical direction is, that man 
should resume what he has wrongly objectified out of him- 
self, and then be his own God and his own Saviour. Thus, he 
says, the truth in the sacraments is that eating and drinking 
and the bath are really human good things. Feuerbach called 
himself an atheist, and explicitly affirmed that his views were in 
direct opposition to those of Hegel, so that it is wrong to place 
him among even the left-wing Hegelians. 

We need not stop to show how easily and logically Har- 
nack's view runs into that of Feuerbach. Here we raise the 
question whether Loisy's view is not identical with it. The res- 
urrection and ascension — the whole process of the excarnation 
and glorification of Jesus of Nazareth — was a subjective one in 
the hearts of the bereaved band of disciples, and not historical 
fact. In the atmosphere of corporate faith and love there was 
this communal act of faith, that gave them a risen and glorified 
Jesus. He ever remains an object of faith (objet de foi), rather 
than of knowledge. And so the whole process of the super- 
natural side of Christianity goes on as a subjective communal 
experience, which is unconsciously objectified. 

Loisy's contention is that the mind of the Church is the 
mind of Christ ; that what the community thinks and does and 
says are the thoughts and deeds and sayings of the glorified 
Christ. So his whole explication of the Christ-element can be 
taken as an objectification of the subjective faith of the com- 
munity. There is not a phase of Church teaching as set forth by 
Loisy, that cannot be consistently explained on Feuerbach's 
view of the objectifying of subjective experiences. An hon- 
est God is, on this theory, the noblest work of man, so a glori- 
fied and an ever present teaching and saving Jesus is the noblest 
work, the creation of the Church. 

Loisy's apparent sincerity is such that we may doubt if he 
consciously takes this purely subjective view of Christ. The 
Christ of the Church as defined in the Nicene Creed is the 
Eternal Son of the Eternal Father. The immanent presence of 



122 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

this Eternal Logos in the Church is no form of mere finite sub- 
jectivity, individual or corporate — that is the view of historical 
Christianity. Loisy apparently accepts this view sincerely. 
And yet his interpretation of its development out of the sub- 
jective faith of the community, seems to deprive it of any true 
objectivity. Any agnostic can accept this interpretation of re- 
ligion as an idealistic fiction, which makes Christianity to be, at 
best, a pious fable. 

If this is Loisy's view, it is based on the same religious 
agnosticism that vitiates the work of Harnack and Sabatier. 
And the same criticism made on their view applies to Loisy's.^ 
Knowledge of objective truth and reality is limited to that of 
science and history, but is denied in the realm of religion. And 
nescience can never give any philosophy of religion that will 
validate or give it authority in any of its forms, even the 
highest. 

Taking this view of Loisy's exposition of The Gospel and 
the Church, we can readily understand and appreciate the con- 
demnation passed upon it by the authorities in the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

Loisy's second volume,^ written after the condemnation, is a 
reply to his critics that retracts nothing, but rather gives more 
countenance to the view that he is treating Christianity as a 
fine, pious fable. In an appendix, he gives the text of the offi- 
cial condemnation of his book, placing it in the Index Librorum 
Prohibitorum, We give a translation of the text of a part of 
this document.^ 

Thus one who turns to Loisy, from Sabatier and Harnack, 
to find a more rational and objective interpretation of Christi- 
anity, will have a feeling of disappointment arising from this 
doubt. 

Religion cannot thrive on a known fable, however pious it 

^Cf. Chap. 11. 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre 
^Cf. Appendix, note V. 



LOISY 123 

may be. If one could only detect the sceptic's smile in the 
honest looks of the author, he would spend no time in reading 
his books. 

Again, if this is Loisy's view, he is also open to criticism as 
to the development of the subjective communal faith. As I 
have said, the development of the faith and the historical devel- 
opment do not seem to be clearly put in vital relation. It is a 
case of casual parallelism rather than of organic interaction. 
Faith at best plays the part of a hermit crab, not growing its 
own shell, but taking possession of the cast-ofif shell of a mol- 
lusk, only quitting it for another when he has outgrown it. It 
grew large enough to take the Roman Empire for its body dur- 
ing the Middle Ages. It may grow large enough to house 
itself in the cast-off shell of modern democracy. But it never 
makes its own shell. Thus one could not speak of its historical 
transformations, as the development of, the Gospel. 

Again, as Loisy resolutely identifies the Gospel with the ex- 
ternal organization — the hermit crab, with its stolen house — he 
could be faulted with just the opposite of Harnack's error. He 
validates the abstraction of the opposite side, that of the body, 
as Harnack does that of the spirit. He gives us the brute 
actual, as Harnack gives us the invisible essence; identifying 
the soul with the body, the Gospel with the Church. 

But now, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, let us 
look at his work as that of a sincere apologist for Christianity. 
Let us take him at his positive word in one passage, as believ- 
ing in a risen and ever living Christ. 

It occurs in the chapter^ in which he discusses the question 
as to the Church having been instituted by Christ. The Mes- 
sianic kingdom of the living Jesus was an historical fact. The 
Church in a true sense continues it. But ''as a divine insti- 
tution it is an object of faith (un ohjet de foi) not a fact that 
is historically demonstrable/' for it is ^'founded upon the di- 
vinity of Christ, which is not an historical fact, but one given 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 169. 



124 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

by faith, of which the Church is witness." Dismissing the 
words 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my 
Church," he holds rightly, that all the texts which concern the 
mission of the Apostles and the real institution of the Church 
are the words of the risen and glorified Christ.^ ''John has 
united into one tableau the instructions of the Saviour in 
Matthew and Luke, and the Pentecostal scene of the Acts. 
That appearance of Christ to his apostles is what founds the 
faith of the Church and the Church itself." But all comes 
from the risen Saviour. The glorified Jesus breathes upon the 
apostles to give spiritual life, as God had breathed into the first 
man to give him natural life. Thenceforward the apostles and 
their successors are the mouthpieces of the glorified Saviour. 
What they say and do is, for faith, what the glorified Jesus 
says and does. But Loisy returns to his contention that the 
resurrection and glorification of Jesus are not, properly speak- 
ing, historical facts, facts for knowledge, but only for the sub- 
jective faith of the community. Finally he says : "Thus, then, 
for the historian, who limits himself to observable facts, it is 
the faith in Christ that founded the Church ; from the point of 
view of faith it is Christ himself, living for the faith and accom- 
plishing through it (faith) that which the historian sees real- 
ized."^ Here he professedly puts himself at the point of view 
of faith. He believes with the disciples and the Church of 
the ages, that Jesus did rise from the dead and ever liveth. He 
has the same faith in the reality of the glorified Saviour that 
Sabatier and Harnack have in God the Father. In the preface^ 
to this second volume, he expressly says that he has not de- 
nied that Jesus was raised from the dead, but only that the fact 
is, rigorously speaking, demonstrable as an historical fact. 
Taking him at his word here that he believes in a risen, glori- 

^ Matthew, XXVHI, 18-20; Luke, XXIV, 46-49; Acts, I, 6-8; John, 
XX, 21-23; Mark, XVI, 15-16. 
^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 172. 
' P. viii. 



LOISY 125 

fied, ever-living, ever-working, a transcendent and yet an im- 
manent Logos in the Church — something more than a mere 
objectified faith of the community — we can accept his whole 
exposition as more objective and rational than that of Har- 
nack's subjective Essence of Christianity, ''In me lives one 
greater than me,'' said Sabatier. That is the only recognition 
of objectivity that we find in the view of Sabatier and Har- 
nack. And it is always open to the doubter to ask what cer- 
tifies to this "one greater than me," being aught else than me at 
the highest. 

Take also the following quotation from Loisy: "From the 
circumstance that Jesus entered into history, it by no means 
follows that He does not still dominate it; from the fact that 
He lived our life and spoke as a man, it does not follow that He 
was not God." As to the Church's theory of The Person and 
Work of Christ, "the Catholic critic admits the truth of this 
interpretation, as he does that of every other dogma, accepting 
its formula as the authorized faith which, born of the word 
of Christ and of the Gospel fact, gradually grew more and 
more precise in the consciousness of Christendom." "The his- 
torical Christ, in the humility of his service is sublime enough 
to justify the Christology of the Church. Its definitions are the 
best for faith that could have been formulated. . . . The senti- 
ment which Jesus had of his union with God is above all defini- 
tion. It is enough to say that the way in which he embodied it, 
is, so far as one can grasp, equivalent in substance to the ec- 
clesiastical definition." "The Gospel idea of the Messiah con- 
tains the principle of the entire Christological development. It 
implies the eternal predestination of the one who should appear 
in this world as the Son of God, and his final exaltation." "Vul- 
gar rationalism with its purely transcendent God and its purely 
human Christ is a paltry heresy. . . . The acquired attainments 
are sure. Christ is God for faith."^ "The integral formula of 

* Cf. Autour d'un Petit Livre, 133-155. 



126 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Christianity is Christ in the Church and God in Christ."^ "The 
vocation of Christ is not that of a prophet. It is unique in its 
kind."2 

Putting all three writers on the plane of earnest and sincere 
faith, and on the basis of a religious agnosticism, we find Loisy 
to be more objective and more Christian than Harnack and Sa- 
batier. He is more objective because he gives us the corporate, 
communal faith rather than that of the private individual. In 
the Church lives one greater than the Church, rather than ''in 
me lives a greater than me." 

So, too, he is more Christian than they are, because with 
them ''the greater than me" is God, symbolized as Father and 
not an ever-living and ever-present Christ. For them the medi- 
ation of Christ is confined to the influence of the Jesus of mem- 
ory — the memory of an historical person who lived and died 
some nineteen centuries ago. As they hold that the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus belongs not to the history of Jesus, but to that of 
the apostles, so they hold that even if he is immortal, it is in no 
other way than other great souls are immortal, and that his 
present influence upon men differs not in kind from the influ- 
ence of departed friends and great men. It should be thor- 
oughly understood that, with them, all reference to a present 
Jesus, in public or private worship is merely symbolical ; that at 
most we can have memorial exercises which will help to call up 
the image of the work and worth of the departed, so that we 
may have a felt presence. Jesus "was crucified dead and 
buried, he descended into hell" — or in the alternate language of 
the rubric before the Apostles' Creed — "he went into the place 
of departed spirits." That is the close of their Apostles' Creed. 
Where and in what manner of existence other departed spirits 
are, is the most we can say of the dead and buried historical 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

Loisy continues the corporate faith of the Church to the end 

^ UEvangile et UEglise, xxxiv. 
^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, 134 



LOISY 127 

of the creed. For the faith of the early community, for the 
faith of the historical Church, Jesus rose from the dead. That, 
for the Church, is a fact in the life of Jesus. However Loisy 
may decline to consider it a demonstrable historical fact, he 
accepts it as a bona fide experience of the disciples, and a con- 
tinued experience of the Church — realizing Jesus and the 
power of his resurrection. 

For Loisy, the mediation of Jesus is a perpetual one. In the 
Church lives, as its animating, guiding, helping spirit a greater 
than itself — the glorified Saviour, the Eternal Logos. The 
Church is his body — oftentimes his body of humiliation. He 
humbles Himself to the limitations of human nature, in time 
and space and historical conditions. His work in the exten- 
sion of the incarnation in the Church militant is in the process 
of perfection into the Church triumphant — just as the historical 
Jesus ''increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God 
and man."^ 

No phase of historical Christianity, or of its fruitful sects, 
have been existent and fruitful apart from the energizing of the 
immanent Logos, Much less has the whole of historical Chris- 
tianity — its developed form of creed and deed and cult — ^been 
alogical. God has been in Christian history. 

The Church has never been perfect, as perfction cannot be 
a mark of any process. So there can be no claim made for the 
absolute infallibility of any form or phase of historical Chris- 
tianity. And Loisy does not hold a brief for any such an in- 
fallible authority. He looks for further transformations of 
the Church in doctrine and cult; taking up the new learning 
and adapting itself to the needs of new times. 

Speaking of the present religious crisis, resulting from the 
new learning or modern culture, he says : 

*'The best means to remedy the trouble does not seem to be 
the suppression of all ecclesiastical organization, all orthodoxy 
and traditional ritual. That would be a casting of Christianity 

' St. Luke, II, 52. 



128 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

out of life and out of humanity. The rather one should start 
from what is, in view of what ought to be, repudiating nothing 
of the heritage transmitted to our age by the Christian cen- 
turies ; but appreciating the necessity and usefulness of the im- 
mense development which has been accomplished in the Church. 
It is to gather the fruits of this work and continue it, since the 
adaptation of the Gospel to the changing conditions of hu- 
manity is as pressing a need to-day as it has always been and 
ever will be."^ 

Again: 'Tt is worthy of notice, that old as the Church is 
.... she regards herself as a provisional institution, a transi- 
tional organization."^ Again, as to the authority of the Church 
he says : *Tt is not true that ecclesiastical authority has ever 
been a sort of external constraint to repress all personal activity 
of conscience. The Church is an educator rather than a domi- 
nating mistress."^ He contends that Romanism aims as much 
as Protestantism, at the formation of religious personalities, 
souls masters of themselves with pure and free consciences, 
though he grants the danger of the Roman tendency towards 
the effacement of the individual. *'The Gospel of Jesus," he 
says, ''was neither wholly individualistic in the Protestant sense, 
nor wholly ecclesiastical in the Catholic sense." ''The Church 
ever employs activity and intelligence in modifying her forms. 
She has, as individualistic theologians do not, a sense of the 
collective and continuous character of Christianity." Again, 
as to dogma, it is impossible for intelligent Christians to believe 
anything, without going on to state it in intellectual forms. 

Then there must be a teacher. The distinction between 
teachers and pupils is inevitable. The Church is a teacher and 
how shall she teach, if she have nothing definite to teach? ^'A 
permanent society, a Church alone can maintain the equilibri- 
um between the heritage and the new acquisitions of truth. 

^ UEvangile et UEglise, p. 278. 

^P. 157. 
"P. 166. 



LOISY 129 

Hence the incessant toil of the human reason to adapt ancient 
truth to the new stages of thought and knowledge. It is incon- 
ceivable that each individual should recommence afresh the 
past, and reconstruct, for his own use, the whole religion.^ 
Here, as elsewhere, each is aided by all and all by each." ''The 
Church does not demand belief in its formulas as the adequate 
expression of absolute truth, but presents them as the least im- 
perfect expression that is morally possible. She demands that 
they be respected for their value, that we seek the truth con- 
tained in them and use them to transmit the truth."^ 

In every phase of Christianity, the Church is as necessary to 
the Gospel as the Gospel is to the Church. Looking at its his- 
tory, his contention that the Church has preserved the Gospel 
seems true. Look at the dark ages and the middle ages. Yes, 
and we may hereafter look back to the present age for illus- 
tration. The Church has no other raison d'etre than the pre- 
servation and propagation of the Gospel in the world. "The 
hierarchy exists for the sake of the faithful. The Church does 
not exist for the service of the Pope, but the Pope exists for the 
service of the Church." ''Christ did not choose a cross for 
himself and reserve a throne for his vicar."^ The authority 
of the Church is the needed preservative of this institution of 
service, as it is of any human institution. And it is true, as 
he says, that "Protestantism itself exists as a religion, by means 
of that amount of ecclesiastical organization, official doctrine 
and confessional worship that it has retained."^ It is as "a 
religion of authority," as Sabatier stigmatizes Protestantism 
up to date, that it has won its mighty moral and spiritual results 
in the modern world. And surely any student of history may 
rightly predict, that when it ceases to be such, and becomes 
"the religion of the spirit;" the religion of merely subjective 

^ UEvangile et L'Eglise, p. 216. 
' P. 218. 

^ Autour d'un Petit Livre, p. 178. 
* UEvangile et UEglise, p. 277. 
9 



130 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

individualism, its days of power and usefulness will be gone. 
In his second volume, Loisy discusses very frankly the function 
of the Pope. Quoting our Saviour's words to his disciples 
at strife as to who of them should be accounted greatest,^ he 
goes on to insist that the raison d'etre of the hierarchy is that 
of service to the people.^ When people come to think that 
public servants act as if the people were made to be their serv- 
ants and ministers, then the people will see no reason of hav- 
ing public servants who prey upon them as public lords. The 
directing elite of any society must be in the service of the 
masses. That is their function. Thence is their authority. 
Ecclesiastical authority is necessary to the preservation and the 
propagation of the Gospel itself. When it ceases to do this, it 
ceases to have a reason for existence. The extreme form of 
ecclesiastical authority was historically necessary in past ages — 
necessary in the last few centuries also against the theological 
anarchy and crumbling individualism of Protestant Christianity. 
But it has its dangers — the oppression of individuals, the being 
an obstacle to the scientific movement, and to all the forms of 
free activity, which is the chief agent of human progress. The 
present revindication of the individual, is a reaction against the 
perversion of authority. It is a movement to preserve the dig- 
nity and the responsibility of the individual, the family, and the 
state against being made the tools of a hierarchy which rules 
for its own profit, rather than serving the welfare of its clients. 
The critical question in the Roman Catholic Church now is, 
whether the hierarchy can adapt itself to the service of mod- 
ern needs. Loisy is hopeful. He expresses his contempt for 
the cry of the Ultramontanists, ''shun the error of rameri- 
canisme," 

The rightful authority of the Church has been vindicated 
by nineteen centuries of Christian history. The abuses of its 
function are now to be corrected — means are to be found for its 

' St. Luke, XXII, 24-27. 
^Ihid., 179. 



LOISY 131 

beneficent exercise to-day, as in past ages. The pupils whom the 
Church is to educate, are not in the same class as those in less 
enlightened ages. The course of instruction and the authority 
of the pedagogue must change to suit the needs of the present. 
Authority can never pass from the Church as an educator, but 
it can adapt itself, as it always has done, to the needs of the 
times. Referring to the indefatigable labors of the present 
Pope, he says, ''in writing that the Pope exists for the service 
of the Church I am thinking of Leo XIIL, and I would say that 
his service has been glorious and good."^ This he writes as a 
loyal Catholic, after the condemnation of his previous book. 

Here the way is open for a philosophy of Christianity that is 
not pessimistic. Here the way is open to real objectivity, 
though it be but in and through a process, and the end is not 
yet. Here we have no crab-cry, back to the primitive, the un- 
developed, but the forward-cry to the more perfect, till we all 
together, corporately, come unto the stature of the fullness of 
Christ glorified. Here we have objectivity and authority — 
not of the brute actual, but of the Logos in the brute actual, 
and that of not a merely immanent Logos, For any finite actu- 
ality — bulk it large as humanity itself — any merely immanent 
Logos, in any form of mere actuality cannot be a sufiicient 
First Principle, leading forward beyond any mere status quo, 
and onward to the final consummation of the whole process of 
the Church militant into the Church triumphant. Any status 
quo of a developing process of a temporal actuality, must have 
the authority of a developed stage only, and never that of an ab- 
solutely infallible authority. Loisy makes no such claim for 
any stage of any of the Creed, polity or cult of even the Roman 
Catholic Church. But he makes the claim for authority that 
every human organization makes, as sustaining and educating 
and developing itself as a minister of good. The actual at any 
time — the body which the soul assumes — is the rational done 
into humanity up to date, by the eternal Logos, which is able to 

^Autour d'un Petit Livre, 178-186. 



132 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

order ''the unruly wills and afifections of sinful men" into more 
conformity to itself. It forbids both the re-affirmation and the 
denial of the ideals, deeds and faith of its past, through which 
it has attained its present. Only the institution that honors its 
parent can dwell long in the land — the promise annexed to the 
Fifth Commandment. It is this authoritative element that pre- 
serves any institution. At the same time is forbids any uncrit- 
ical acceptance of previous forms of life, as well as any glorifi- 
cation of any mere status quo of the institution. Successive 
forms are posited and, in time, transcended, but the identity 
persists in the differences. 

The eternal Logos — the ever really present Christ in the 
Church — that is ''the esence of Christianity." That is the in- 
terpretation of Christianity that historical Protestantism as well 
as Romanism has ever maintained. The Logos is not a merely 
human, or a merely subjective idea, but an absolute Logos, law, 
order, form, reason, self-realizing itself in temporal forms. 
This realization has been through institutional forms as edu- 
cative of individuals. It has ever been corporate. And the 
corporate form has ever been authoritative and, only as such, 
educative of the individual. The Church, as the institutional 
form of the religious side of the Logos, is thus the objective 
ratoinal authority of reason for all its members, in which they 
find their freedom. To be a good Churchman is thus essential 
to being a good Christian. From the cradle to the grave, the 
Church appeals to its members with the voice of paternal au- 
thority. It asks for no other than filial response, and the re- 
cognition of its past, present and promised beneficence in edu- 
cating them into the freedom of the Sons of God, "whose 
service is perfect freedom." This is the form of authority 
that the Church assumes — the fact of its being the adequate 
ethical, as it has ever been the historical, medium of the Chris- 
tian life. 

Harnack and Sabatier pose as the foremost representatives 



LOISY 133 

of Protestantism. Speaking historically and objectively, they 
are nothing of the sort.^ 

Professor Harnack is apprehensive for the future of Prot- 
estantism. But this is not because of the decline of theology or 
because of the growth of the so-called liberal movement of which 
he is a representative. The following are the danger signals 
that alarm him.^ They are signals '^of the progressive Catholi- 
cizing (Romanizing) of the Protestant Churches" in Germany. 

In this little volume he says of the Protestant churches of 
Germany that ''(i) They are coming to look upon the visible 
Church as identical with the true Church invisible, having au- 
thority to be respected. They have come to speak too much of 
the Church, and of the what the Church says and demands. 
The Catholicizing (Romanising) of the conception of the 
Church is the most powerful of the radical transformations 
which Protestantism is undergoing in the nineteenth century. 

(2) They are promoting the authority of the creeds, as 
distinguished from systems of doctrinal theology. 

(3) They are attempting ''to produce complete uniformity 
in the services of the Church. . . . They are already in the 
midst of a liturgical Catholicizing movement." 

(4) They are exalting the Sacraments and magnifying the 
clergy. 

(5) There was a time when Protestantism was a Church 
of preaching, and a school of catechizing and nothing more. 
But now alas ! we have a very complex lot of activities carried 
on by the Church. We have deacons and deaconesses, city mis- 
sionaries, Sunday school teachers of both sexes, and other most 
varied and graduated organs of the Church's life and activity. 
Religious meetings have taken manifold forms. Religion is 
forcing its way into all the professional walks of mankind, into 
all corporations, and there setting up Christian fellowship and 

^ Cf. Chap. I of this volume. 

^ Thoughts on Protestantism. Adolf Harnack. 1899 



134 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

a footing of Christian morality. The Churches are paying at- 
tention to that multitude of topics which we call the ''Social 
Question." 'Tn all these factors taken together, we have what 
may be described as the Catholicizing of Protestantism." 

Professor Harnack first criticises the older Protestantism 
for not having to do entirely with the simple Gospel. He then 
criticizes the present Protestant Churches for having departed 
so far from early Protestantism. Finally as he says, ''the critical 
form of Protestantism is going. ... is to have a clear insight 
into conditions in which the Protestant life is on the point of 
disappearing." These conditions are the ones which he has 
given as signs of the Catholicizing of the Protestant Churches. 
This movement, he adds, is fascinating and tempting. ''But it 
is temptation; for it is the last of Protestantism, of the Gospel 
and of the truth." 

But he still sees some ground for hope. It lies in the lines 
of a non-authoritative, individualistic sort of association of 
those who, like himself, form the ecclesiola in ecclesia. He lays 
"a wreath of profound gratitude on the tomb of Albrecht 
Ritschl" and looks to the new leaders to save the Protestant 
Churches from going over to a sham Catholicism. 

It is needless to say that the Protestant Churches of Ger- 
many have as utterly disowned his interpretation of Protestant- 
ism, as the Roman Catholic Church has repudiated Loisy's in- 
terpretation of Romanism. The lecture that forms the contents 
of his little book. Thoughts on Protestanism, was characterized 
in a German paper as "a radical repudiation of Christianity, 
and of the Christian belief founded on the historical fact of the 
revelation of God in Christ." 

Loisy writes as a Roman Catholic. That is an accident of 
birth and education. Granting that he is as sincere as Sabatier 
and Harnack, and making allowance for this accident of ec- 
clesiastical home, we must grant that he takes a much more 
objective and historical and, therefore, more rational view of 



LOISY 135 

Christianity than Sabatier, Martineau, Harnack, and the whole 
school of Ritschlians. 

If we object, as object we do, to his Romanistic prejudices, 
we can find the same view under the prejudices of the Anglican 
Church, in the notable volume of eleven High Anglicans pub- 
lished fifteen years ago, entitled Lux Mundi} This volume 
will well bear re-reading in connection with that of Loisy. 

We may accept the interpretation which both the Roman- 
and the Anglo-Catholic give of institutional Christianity — ac- 
cept their philosophical interpretation of the continuous re-in- 
carnation of the transcendent Logos in corporate, institutional 
religious form. It is a philosophy which belongs to no one, be- 
cause it belongs to every form of the Church, and also to every 
form of man's institutional life. We may object, as object we 
do, to the restricted view of the Anglo-Catholic writers. They 
take too insular, or better, too peninsular, a view to be quite 
Catholic. They do not construct a map of a sufficiently large 
and variegated form, in defining the bounds of the Church. 
They fail to recognize that outside of the Episcopal Churches, 
there are also other vital and fruitful branches of the vine. 
"Hinter dem Berge sind aiich Leiite/' Historical Protestant- 
ism is looked at too much as an apostasy. And yet a very large 
part of the rich, fruitful Christian life of modern Europe and 
America, is outside of what both the Romanist and these Anglo- 
Catholic writers call the Church. A narrow, arrogant and for- 
mal Anglo-Catholicism cannot give an adequate interpretation 
of historical Christianity. But we may neglect the limitations 
of all these writers and yet welcome their interpretation of parts 
of Christianity, and apply it to the whole. Every form of 
Christianity that is valid for the extension of the incarnation in 
humanity, is an extension of the Church. Every branch that is 
a fruitful branch, is a branch of the true vine. Every fold 
(avAiJ) of Christians belong to the one flock (TroLfivt]) of the one 

^ Cf. Sterrett's Reason and Authority in Religion, Part TI. 



136 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Shepherd.^ Each and all they are forms of ''the reHgion of the 
spirit" because they are ''rehgions of authority." "For where 
two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in 
the midst of them."^ The presence is communal, the authority 
is corporate, the freedom is that of members. 

And yet the vision splendid that haunts both the Romanist 
and the Anglican, is more than a dream ; more than merely an 
echo of the Saviour's prayer — ''that they all may be one."^ The 
integrations of the differences has always been more real than 
apparent. The bond of identity has been the ever-present Lord. 
And yet the differences are greater than can belong to a normal 
and healthy body. A re-united Christendom is a consummation 
devoutly to be wished, and labored, for. The integration of 
Romanism and Protestantism is the goal, necessary though dis- 
tant. They are stages in the religious development and educa- 
tion of the world into Christianity, and not world-historical op- 
positions that must or ought to persist. Both of them are 
forms of a "religion of authority." In neither of them is the in- 
dividual to "work out his own salvation." The Reformation-cry 
"Salvation is by faith alone," made that faith not to be work of 
man, but an act of divine grace — the work of God in Christ, 
working in men "both to will and to do of His good pleasure."* 
Luther, in referring to this text, exhorted men to work out, to 
root out and cast out all merely human salvation, that the liber- 
ating work of God might be of effect. 

This note of authority belongs to the whole of historical 
Protestantism, and it is not too much to say that when this note 
goes. Protestantism will cease to be religiously educative. 

The whole question of the relations of Romanism and Pro- 
testantism deserves a larger treatment than can be given here. 
But a brief treatment may be in place. 

' St. John, X, 17. 
' St. John, XVII, 21. 
" St. Matthew, XVII, 20. 
* Philippians, II, 12, 13. 



LOISY 137 

I have referred to the personal tone in Sabatier's volumes. 
They are the confession of his personal faith. The same is true, 
in a less marked way, of Harnack's book. I have faulted them 
both, for their allowing their private prejudices to prevent their 
taking an objective view of Christianity. Let me make a pre- 
liminary personal confession of private prejudices ; of sub- 
jective likes and convictions. Practically they are the same as 
those of Sabatier and Harnack, anti-sympathetic with either 
the Anglo-Catholic or Roman Catholic. I have the same in- 
bred strain of subjectivity in my religious life and sympathies. 
I have been suckled at the mother-breast of Protestantism. I 
have a dislike for ecclesiasticism. In temper, I am a non-con- 
formist. Following my likes, I should seek the religious or- 
ganization with the minimum of ecclesiasticism. The anti- 
ecclesiastical spirit has been bred into the very fibre of my 
spiritual life by my Scotch Presbyterian ancestry and training. 
To this day I can never hear disparaging remarks about the 
Presbyterians without irrepressible ire being roused within me. 
I am a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church — so long as 
it remains the Protestant Episcopal Church, and no longer — 
from intellectual convictions. I have no sympathy with the so- 
called Catholic party in our Church. I take it to be a psycho- 
logical impossibility that I should ever become a Roman Catho- 
lic or an Anglo-Catholic. Following my private taste I should, 
rather than go Romeward, go to the Society of Friends, and 
enjoy the inner light, and the calm and serene strenuosity, the 
personal independence, the gentle firmness, the quiet inner life 
of the peace loving Quakers. Let me call myself a Christian 
mystic — one whose inner life goes on under ecclesiastical forms 
that sit lightly upon me. Why I became, and why I remain a 
good Churchman, then, is on objective intellectual grounds. I 
find that Christian mysticism is not a merely subjective product, 
but that, historically, it has always been born and nurtured 
within the folds of the Church — Roman or other. Mysticism 



138 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

itself has no genius for organization or propagation. It be- 
longs to the Oriental type of subjectivity. It is beautiful and 
attractive. But it never has given a form of historical Chris- 
tianity. It is sporadic and individual. It is like the pearl that 
is no part of the healthy oyster. So I believe that even Chris- 
tian mysticism is a form of Christianity, that, speaking historic- 
ally and objectively, can never give or maintain a form of the 
Church on earth. 

Vital, progressive, missionary and educating Christianity al- 
ways has had, and always must have a body. It must be an or- 
ganized body, with polity, creed and cult — external, objective, 
secular if you will, in form — a kingdom of heaven on earth — not 
in heaven. It is not something invisible and merely heavenly. 
To fault ecclesiastical Christianity, is to fault Christianity for 
living rather than dying among men ; for existing to preserve, 
maintain and transmit the Gospel. 

All the criticism that can be made against this visible insti- 
tutional form of Christianity, can be put under the commonplace 
remarks that nothing finite is perfect ; that no developing proc- 
ess is as good as the developed process ; that the Christianity of 
men has always been profoundly inferior to that of God ; that the 
Church militant is not identical in perfection with the Church 
triumphant. Any total distrust of ecclesiastical Christianity is 
pathological. The stanch Churchman occupies the normal 
rational standpoint. 

Thus, when repressing one's subjective likings and dislik- 
ings and taking an objective view of Christianity, one is com- 
pelled to be a stanch Churchman; to contend for the organic 
visible form of Christianity against the merely subjective, mys- 
tical, invisible, pectoral form in which Sabatier and Harnack 
propose to place its essence. Historical Christianity has always 
been — up to date, as Sabatier allows — a religion of authority. 
Hegel speaks of the state as "the terrestrial god." The adjec- 
tive ''terrestrial" of course makes it to be less than the absolute 
God. But the noun ''god" places the state — the whole concrete 



LOISY 139 

of a people's political life — as the vice-regent of God in all that 
concerns their secular welfare. Its institutions, laws, customs 
are the best formulation of the laws of well-being. In the high, 
the Greek view of it, the state is jure divino. As such it is au- 
thoritative. 

Thus St. Paul could write even of the Roman state, that it 
was ''ordained of God," ''a minister of God to thee for good."^ 
The freedom and welfare of its members, for which it exists, is 
to be attained through conformity to ordained powers. 

In the same objective way we must recognize the Church as 
''the terrestrial god," jure divino, a minister of God for the re- 
ligious welfare of its members. This is the objective view that 
all historical students must take of Christianity. It is the view 
that Sabatier and Harnack do not take. ''The essence of Chris- 
tianity" being restricted to the feeling of filial relation with God 
the Father, nearly everything which has constituted historical 
Christianity is considered as a debasement of its essence. 

Those who hate Christianity and would fain have it perish, 
could ask for no more speedy form for its destruction than this 
destruction of its body. Those who are not Christians, but who 
study it simply as students of history, must say that there can 
be no hope of its preservation except through its continuance 
as a visible Church. Even Christian mystics, when they come 
to analyze the process through which they have attained their 
inner life, will find that it has been mediated by the work of the 
Church. But for the Church of the ages having preserved and 
promulgated the Gospel, they would never have had the nurture 
that has made them Christian mystics. The Roman Catholic 
Church has nurtured the most noted Christian mystics. 

Taking an objective, rational and historical view one does 
not see how to avoid the conclusion that the future of Christian- 
ity, like its past, depends upon its being a "religion of author- 
ity," a visible, organized institution, with polity, creed and cult. 
However much one's own private subjective sympathies may be 

* Romans, XIII, 1-4 



140 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

with the standpoint of Sabatier and Harnack, he cannot but in- 
tellectually recognize this to be pathological, and the objective 
view to be the normal and wholesome one. 

Loisy accepts Sabatier and Harnack as representatives of 
Protestantism. But they, confessedly, do not represent his- 
torical Protestantism up to date. They only presume to be the 
earlier exponents of the Protestantism of the future. Looking 
at the matter objectively, one would say, that if Protestanism 
ceases to be ''a religion of authority" and becomes the inner 
mystical life of the spirit in the individual, then the future of 
historical Christianity is not with Protestantism. 

Loisy says that there is a crisis in the Roman Catholic 
Church now, and Sabatier and Harnack voice the same in re- 
gard to Protestantism. The Zeitgeist oi modern culture de- 
mands of the Church, at least a modus vivendi with itself. 
Modern culture must be taken up and appropriated by the 
Church, in order to its being in the future, as it has been in the 
past, a minister of good in the religious life of humanity. Sa- 
batier and Harnack, recognizing the same crisis in Protestant- 
ism, propose to meet it by ceasing to consider historical, institu- 
tional Christianity — the Church — as authoritative. They both 
err in making Protestanism to have so little appreciation of the 
Church. The early reformers were good Churchmen. John 
Calvin speaks of the Church with all the fervor of a Cyprian. 
The Puritans held an extreme view of the jure divino form of 
their polity. Hooker was a very much more moderate defender 
of Episcopacy. The belittling of the Church by these writers, 
makes them the exponents of a Protestanism that never was. 

We demur on historical grounds to Loisy's considering 
them to be the representatives of Protestantism. And we de- 
mur to their way of meeting the crisis. 

We recognize as fully as they do the limitations, errors and 
evils of both historical Romanism and Protestantism. We rec- 
ognize that the finite is not the infinite, that "the terrestrial 



LOISY 141 

god" is not the absolute God ; that nothing finite — nothing that 
is in a process of becoming — is yet perfect. But we cannot rec- 
ognize the taking any form of hfe out of historical processes 
to be a means of continuing its life in history. Mere essence 
can never be an actuality. And, though no empirical actuality 
can ever be the absolute reality, it is the time and space form of 
the process towards this reality. 

But no historical form of actuality is ever the merely brutal 
external — the mere body without the soul. As a living thing, 
it is always the unity of essence and its manifestation — always 
an insouled externality. And the mere manifestation, the mere 
external, is always senseless without a soul. Both are abstrac- 
tions. The actuality is the truth of them both, as the living 
man is the truth of soul and body. There is no radical dualism, 
except of abstractions. The analysis of all experience gives us 
the unity of the dual abstractions. Thus the Church is an 
actuality, an ensouled body, an incarnated soul — the Gospel in 
historical form. It is the continued incarnation of the timeless, 
and spaceless Logos in temporal, historical processes. When 
it becomes merely subjective, it passes out of objectivity, out of 
history. 

Again, no form of actuality, no form of time and space ex- 
istence is ever merely static. It is always in a process — either 
of ripening or rotting. Even its rotting is a stage of ripening 
into other form. Development is ever self-development, a ris- 
ing on stepping stones of a dead self to a higher self. 

Hence, though every form of actuality be a form of reality, 
we must have degrees of reality in the dynamic process of de- 
velopment. One form of any actuality is either higher or lower 
than another form. The new-born babe is a higher degree of 
reality than the unborn foetus; the child and the man higher 
forms than the new-born babe. 

Now to apply this to the Christianity, we must maintain, 
(i) that the Church is actual Christianity, and, (2) that its dif- 
ferent forms are different degrees of reality — different stages 



142 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of the historical reaHzation of that absolute religion, which is 
always sublimely superior to the Christianity of men. Roman- 
ism and Protestantism are to-day the chief forms of institu- 
tional Christianity in the modern world. It is open to the stu- 
dent of history, to note the mighty work of these two branches 
of the Church in the past, to estimate their present worth and 
influence, and to forecast the future of historical Christianity. 

This would have to be an appreciation of the work of the 
Church under the three rubrics of: 

(i) Polity and Discipline. 

(2) Creed and Doctrine. 

(3) Cult, or Worship. 

Putting ourselves at the standpoint of an "impartial specta- 
tor," or a student of history and institutions, we may briefly in- 
dicate what would require a volume to express. 

One sees these three forms to have been essential constitu- 
tive factors in historical Christianity. They have made it both 
a religion of authority and a religion of spiritual nurture — a 
preserver, a defender and a propagator of the Gospel. He is a 
dreamer who thinks that such a mighty form of human institu- 
tion as the Church is moribund, or that there will be any future 
Christianity without these factors. We should say that, 
whether we believe in Christianity or not, the very factors that 
Harnack decries as the Catholicizing elements in the Protestant 
Churches, are all notes of the self-preservation of the Church 
and her work. 

Harnack, as we have seen, refers to the mcreasing reference 
to the Church, her ways and teaching; the increasing au- 
thority accorded the Creeds as distinguished from systems 
of doctrinal theology ; the development of the liturgical side ; the 
exaltation of the Sacraments ; and the slighting of preaching for 
the work of social amelioration. If Protestantism has suffered 
'a decline of these factors, her re-appreciation of them are signs 
of a better organized life and better aids to her work. 

I. Polity and Discipline. — An impartial, or even an adverse, 



LOISY 143 

spectator recognizes the power of organization and discipline 
in the maintenance of any form of institution. A long-Hved 
and broad-spread and efficient institution vahdates its poHty. 
Here, surely one must acknowledge the vitality and efficiency 
of Roman Catholicism. History shows no equal to it. It 
shows no sign of being doomed to being merely '^a parenthesis 
in the record of the larger life of Christendom." 

The Protestant Church of England, and the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of America have the same polity and validity. 
That is one factor of the Universal Church that, fortunately, 
the Church of England was not compelled to drop at the Refor- 
mation. 

What student of history would advise any one of these three 
branches of the Church to surrender the historic Episcopate as 
a means of self-preservation, in the present crisis? The view 
of the judicious Hooker commends itself. The historic Epis- 
copate is, in the long run, necessary to the well-being of the 
Church, though it be not necessary to the being of it. It is the 
form of the organic unity of the Church throughout the ages. 
Evidently other forms have been jure divino for the propaga- 
tion of the Gospel. One must needs be stone-blind, intoxicated 
with sectarian conceit, not to see fruitful branches of the Church 
which are not yet Episcopal in polity. Still, one must see that 
this form has been the most continuous, oecumenical and elastic 
one. Historical circumstances justified the Protestant 
Churches on the Continent in letting go this factor, in their po- 
tent protest against the corruptions of the Catholic Church. 
And the magnificent and beneficent work of these Churches for 
four centuries, prove Hooker's contention that the historic 
Episcopate is not necessary to the being of a Church.^ 

The impartial spectator need say but little as to Discipline. 
It is essential in any body, in order to its doing its work. Any 
institution must be authoritative in order to be disciplinary and 

^Cf. at length my Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, Ap- 
pendix on Christian Unity, 



144 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

educative. No church has ever held to its special forms of dis- 
cipline being final. As Article XXXIV of the Articles of Re- 
ligion of the Protestant Episcopal Church puts it : ''Every par- 
ticular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change and 
abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by 
man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying." 

Finally, the impartial student will say, that everyone who 
belittles the Church and her ways, is weakening her power for 
good. The maintenance of the Church is to the Gospel, what 
the maintenance of the body is to the soul. He is a novelist in 
spirit, who could expect either to see an institutionalized form 
of a religion of the Spirit, or to have a Church of the future 
sectarianized from the Church of the ages. 

11. Creed and Doctrine. — The impartial spectator of insti- 
tutions sees how every institution naturally and necessarily be- 
gets dogma — some intellectual expression of its principles, con- 
stitution, by-laws and objects and methods. This is more par- 
ticularly true with a teaching institution. 

Harnack properly distinguishes between the creeds of the 
Church, i. e,. The Apostles' and The Nicene Creeds, and the 
ever-varying doctrines of orthodoxy. As a matter of fact 
these Catholic creeds of the Church have been held in common 
by both Romanists and Protestants. That was one part of the 
Christian heritage that the Reformers did not give up. They 
have ever been sacredly guarded as the very Constitution of the 
teaching Church. In the decay of orthodoxy, this reversion to 
the Catholic Creeds with increased respect, is a sign of whole- 
some self-preservation. The decay of orthodoxy harms them 
not. They abide as the charter of faith, and of freedom from 
temporary systems of theology. Harnack considers this to be 
a sign of the Catholicizing of Protestanism. But it is nothing 
more than a revival of the appreciation of the oecumenical 
creeds that historical Protestantism has always held. 

Technical orthodoxy is well-nigh dead in most of the Prot- 
estant Churches. Its doctrines of the verbal inspiration of the 



LOISY 145 

Bible ; of sin ; of the atonement ; its mechanical tritheism ; its 
gloomy Sabbaths and its lurid eschatology, of which the creeds 
say nothing, have all gone, except as they are conserved in 
more catholic ideals. 

Orthodoxy was essentially rationalistic. Unitarianism was 
its legitimate child. It dropped the ''we believe'' for the ''I 
believe" and hence is now in danger of dropping even this 
affirmation of individual belief. Never an ecclesiastical Pope 
demanded such subservience of private judgment as did ortho- 
doxy in its palmy days. Its deadly heresy was its limiting 
God's revelation to one logical system of doctrine, and this is 
leading to-day to a denial of His revelation in any form. His- 
torical justice can be accorded to the Puritans and their ortho- 
doxy, without making orthodoxy the essence of the Gospel. 
The mistake of orthodoxy has been threefold: the attempt to 
arrest the constant metamorphosis to which dogmas are sub- 
ject; the attempt to hold the provincial and temporary in ab- 
straction from the oecumenical; and the attempt to abstract it 
from the full concrete life of Christianity and make it to be the 
essence of that life. 

The first escape has been into ethical Christianity. The 
second has been that opened up by Ritschl — back to the "crystal 
Christ." The next escape has been into social ethics, or the 
philanthropic work of ''institutional churches" — the service of 
Christ being interpreted as that of service to fellow men. 
Great and faithful as have been these three forms of activity, 
with those who have thrown off the incubus of orthodoxy, we 
find the common danger to be that of de-religionizing the 
Church. From ethics to humanitarianism, and from the wor- 
ship of humanity to secularism, the process goes, when di- 
vorced from theology and from the specifically religious life. 
It is the sense of this danger that is leading to what Harnack 
decries as the promoting of the authority of Catholic creeds. 
It is a catholicizing element that is to be welcomed. 

III. Cult or Worship. — If we were asked to name the spe- 
10 



146 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

cific factor of the Church that makes for the nurture of the 
specifically religious life, we should have to say that it is that 
cult or worship. It is therein that the at-one-ment of man 
with God is realized. As Loisy says : ''History knows no in- 
stance of a religion without a Cult/' A.nd ''Christianity had 
to find a ritual or cease to exist." 

The central act of worship has always been that of the sac- 
rifice, as the act of real communion between man and God. 
Prayer and praise and Scripture reading and the sacraments — 
the whole of a cult is distinguished by the preponderating em- 
phasis it places upon the divine side of this communion. It is 
that which elevates man from being a mere secular creature; 
makes him conscious of his divine kinship, and of the divine 
graciousness. 

So in the Christian Church, the Eucharist, the Holy Com- 
munion, the Lord's Supper or the Mass, has always had the 
central place, as the central act of worship. And, unless the 
Church of the future abdicates the function of the Church of 
the ages, she will continue to be a Church with worship as her 
central fire, her heart, whence she pulsates life into all other of 
her forms and functions. Whatever other function and minis- 
try for men she may have, she must be a Church with a cult. 
Its central act of worship must be to celebrate and realize the 
union of the Divine with the human. It is thus that it will hum- 
ble and exalt the worshipers, and give them that inspiration of 
more than human power, in the strength of which they may go 
forward to fulfill all the various offices of human culture in the 
larger Kingdom of God. Its chief function must be specifically 
religious. It is only as it is thus distinctively religious — mys- 
tical, if you will — that it can have any permanent ministrant 
function for a humanity that is incurably religious ; minister to 
the heavenly homesickness of prodigal sons of God; minister 
in the Divine drama of the education of the race. The Church 
is not to mistake its central function for that of literature, sci- 



LOISY 147 

ence, art, philosophy; for that of the press or that of social 
reform. 

The Church is not the only minister of God in His work. 
But her work is to minister to the reHgious side of man's 
nature — the side that raises man above himself in merely secular 
relations. Its function is primal, abiding and central; giving 
inspiration and significance more than secular to all forms of 
secular activity. Religion is the central sun of the whole sys- 
tem, that shines that all else may thrive and be of worth. 

It may be granted that Protestantism has too frequently 
neglected this factor in the Church's life. It may be granted 
that too individualistic a conception of the religious life has 
tended to throw a shadow upon the place of corporate worship. 
And so it should be held that signs of a liturgical revival are 
signs of a new fountain of inspiration for Protestantism. 

In all these Catholicizing tendencies, there is no reversion 
to what is distinctively Roman. Rome has them — that is her 
Catholic side. But Rome has much besides, that makes her 
distinctively the Roman Church. 

Protestantism has much of distinctively religious and ethical 
life that Rome lacks. Perhaps it is impossible for our im- 
partial spectator to have an unbiased historical judgment as 
to the relative worth of these two forms of the visible Church. 
So far as he can, he must recognize them both as historical 
phenomena of most momentous significance and worth in 
the religious nurture of men. He must appreciate the ex- 
cellences and the defects of both. He must say that the 
Church in the future will be stronger in proportion as she arms 
herself with the best of both. He must judge that a reunited 
Christendom would be more powerful than its present divided 
form; that a Protestantized Catholic Church, or a Catholi- 
cized Protestant Church would be the best form of a nurturing 
and missionary Church. The Roman Church has the advan- 
tage of organic unity. The Protestant Churches have the dis- 
advantage of sectarianism. The first step, then, should be the 



148 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

organic unification of the Protestant Churches, and the reclaim- 
ing their full Catholic heritage of polity, creed and cult. The 
efficient Church of the future will not be sectarian. The 
Church that will be strong as the propagator of the Gos- 
pel, will be thoroughly corporate — corporate in polity, creed 
and cult. Its communal forms will work the communal spirit, 
to the edifying of its members. Divisive individualism, as 
urged by Sabatier and Harnack, has no promise of a future in 
religion. Their reduction of religion to a subjective feeling in 
the heart of the individual, is but a perversion of the funda- 
mental Protestant conception of the personal element in relig- 
ion, an element that is also in Romanism. 

The late Dr. Hedge, a Unitarian preacher, and a professor 
of Church History in Harvard University, gave the following 
judgment: 

'That the spirit of God may and does sometimes act directly 
on the soul, without intervention of Church or any secondary 
agent, is a fundamental principle of Christian doctrine, never 
to be surrendered. Every fresh dispensation of religion has 
originated in that way. But practically, for the mass of man- 
kind, the spirit acts through the Church ; and every sect that has 
grounded itself on the principle of private inspiration, from 
Montanism to Quakerism, has perished utterly, or drags a de- 
cadent, dying life. Protestantism did not at the start assume 
that ground. It was not a protest against the Church as such, 
but only against certain abuses and corruptions. And Protes- 
tantism itself, unless it can recall its separations and atone its 
schisms, and, renouncing dogmatic willfulness, round itself into 
one, is doomed to pass away, and be reabsorbed in the larger 
fold of an oecumenical Church." 

These are strong and notable words, coming from a member 
of that body that stands foremost in its maintenance of the 
individualistic point of view. They are the words of one who 
was both an historian and a philosopher, expressing his objec- 
tive judgment rather than his private preferences. 



LOISY 149 

If Protestantism cannot do this, what if Rome, which has 
often shown master strokes of wisdom, should arouse to her op- 
portunity and rise to her duty? What if, dropping her now 
provincial name and character, Roman, she might seek to re- 
integrate all Protestantism? It looks like a seeming impossi- 
bility. But if the day ever comes that Protestantism ceases to 
be "a religion of authority," and the Romanism itself can take 
up the noble fruits and principles of Protestantism, then the time 
will come when every Christian must answer the question to 
such Catholicism, why or why not ? 

One should not look with distrust and alarm on what is 
called the American party in the Church of Rome. It repre- 
sents the best intellectual and ethical forces now making for 
a true Catholicizing of Romanism, to meet the needs of the 
higher life of the Protestant world. The very able Father 
Hecker, a pervert from the Episcopal Church, was, as is gen- 
erally recognized in France, the author of ramericanisme. 
Among the present representatives of this advanced or liberal 
interpretation of the Roman Catholic Church, are Archbishops 
Ireland, Gibbons, Keane and Spalding; the Very Rev. Mgr. 
O'Connell, Rector of the Catholic University of America, 
and Professor Zahm. Loyal to their Church of the ages, they 
have sympathies that are reaching out towards ways of adapt- 
ing it to the needs of the modern world, that are temptingly 
calling to many who would turn a deaf ear to the Ultramontan- 
ists and Jesuits in the Roman Church. I believe that they are 
in earnest in their irenical temper and attitude. 

The Church exists as the religious organ within the larger 
Kingdom of God in the life of the world. She must adapt her- 
self to the other functions as they change and grow — to the po- 
litical, intellectual and practical acquisitions of men ; assimilate 
their acquisitions, tardily, it is true, for that is the conservative 
genius of all institutions. To keep fully abreast with modern 
thought and scientific theories would be premature. The 
Church whose chief energies are spent in this constant read- 



150 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

justment, will miss its proper work; will be diluted into a weak 
form of other functions, and lose its own distinctive genius and 
raison d'etre. 

The future of Christianity is bound up with the future of 
the Church. There is no other human instrumentality for the 
preservation and propagation of the Gospel. 

Hence, even an outsider would advise the stanch mainte- 
nance of the external Church, and the re-unification of its vari- 
ous parts, as the wisest means for its continued existence and the 
successful performance of its function. 

The following practical suggestion is obvious. Let no relig- 
ious man speak disrespectfully of the form of any other man's 
religion. Let Christians of every Church resolutely restrain 
the critical attitude towards other Churches. Let us Protes- 
tants cease from the vulgar form of criticising the Roman 
Catholics that has been too common, and let Roman Catholics 
recognize the religious life nurtured by the Protestants as kin 
with their own. Let every sect at least recognize that there 
are other sects, with the same fundamental end and function of 
nurturing the religious life. 

To the religious man, the meanest flower of religion that 
blows should be regarded as sacred. With contempt for none 
and with charity for all, is a temper that will do more to pro- 
mote the religious life of our generation, than any form of 
intellectual reconciliation of religion with modern culture. 

We have seen in a previous chapter how religion transcends 
and fulfills all forms of morality; how it is the transcendent 
element that erects a man above himself as a finite secular form 
of empirical existence ; how it is the completion and fruition of 
all that is truly human ; how it is the beatitude of soul, the beati- 
tude of mankind, which when experienced, makes man more 
than conqueror in all the transitory vicissitudes of life and death, 
because it gives him the freedom and perfect peace that only 
come with at-one-ment with God. Science gives us reconcilia- 
tion with an abstract phase of experience, and is doing a benefi- 



LOISY iSi 

cent work in rationalizing that side of experience. Organized 
religion has always stood for the work of concrete reason in 
dealing with another phase of truly human experience — fully as 
real, to say the least, as the phase with which science deals. 
There is no call for any age-long religion to abdicate its specific 
work, at the bidding of the scientific culture of any age. She 
can stand boldly and firmly on the vantage ground of centuries 
of beneficent results. Only so far as her interpretation of the 
religious life has become interwoven with views of a less ade- 
quate scientific description of the physical world, does she need 
to re-adjust herself to the new views, and then, not hastily, nor 
until the new scientific view is firmly established. The religious 
life can be nurtured in a religion that is not up to date with 
modern scientific views. Besides the change of the setting can- 
not be made rapidly, except at the peril of the religious life. 
For that life is largely in the realm of feeling. And the attach- 
ments of feeling, domestic, social or religious, cannot be rudely 
dealt with in the merely intellectual way. 

Conservatism is essential to life. All such detachments must 
be made slowly. Besides new views of science are often put 
forward as divorced from and incompatible with any religion. 
That is, some who speak in the name of science, contend that 
religion is incredible in any form in face of the new views of 
science. When this is done, I do not see why religion, as the 
expression of the more concrete reason of humanity, should 
not, for its own self-preservation, decline to give up all for 
nothing. What has been acquired has been acquired, in re- 
ligion as well as in science. There should be some irenical 
rapprochement on the side of those representatives of science, 
who essay to give science a metaphysical interpretation. Other- 
wise their obiter dicta may fairly be met with a flat refusal. 
Romanist and Protestant should join hands and forces here. 

Sabatier emphasizes the psychological necessity of being re- 
ligious. That is good, and upon the whole true — as true as 
the psychological necessity of man's being scientific. That 



152 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

seems to be the verdict of history. But the necessity of being 
rehgious can be put upon larger and firmer grounds. Man is 
by nature a rehgious being, using nature here, not in the em- 
pirical, psychological sense, but in Aristotle's sense of man's 
ideal or perfected nature. Psychologically, religion might be a 
disease or an illusion. So also might science be, as Von Hart- 
mann argues. Comte held religion to be a disease found only 
at the cradle of nations. But his later founding of the ''religion 
of humanity," shows that he came to have a more concrete view 
of the nature of man. 

Let us put the question thus: — ''What is the chief end of 
man?" Take all man's secular activities in practical life — do- 
mestic, social and political; and all in his intellectual life — 
science and history and literature. Abstract resolutely and ab- 
solutely from art, religion and philosophy, and we have, at the 
utmost, a finite, secular end and aim. Beyond lies the existen- 
tial source and fount whence issue the empirical phenomena of 
mind and matter. Spencer calls it the incomprehensible Power, 
the Unknown and Unknowable, the Absolute whose "existence 
is a necessary datum of consciousness." 

Is the gulf between phenomena and the unknown source and 
substance of phenomena unknowable or impassable? That is 
the root question. Art, religion and philosophy affirm that it is 
not. Schopenhauer found in art the only means of bridging 
the gulf. Religion, historically, has always been a practical 
affirmation of the transcendence of the limit. Philosophy has 
always been an intellectual affirmation of the same. The abso- 
lute is not the unknown. Art, religion and philosophy give us, 
respectively, the Beautiful, the Good and the True, as the 
spheres in which man's finite nature finds its supreme vocation 
and fruition. 

Now it must be considerd that every form of modern culture 
which denies this, really belittles the conception of the nature 
and destiny of man. It is an "either — or" here. Either the 
gulf is passable or not. If it is not, then we have the merely 



LOISY 153 

secular and phenomenal conception of man's nature. It if is, 
we have the other conception. The power of ideals is mighty. 
As a man thinks and feels so he does. 

Now in particular, religion stands for the affirmation that, 
psychologically and historically at least, mankind has always 
passed the gulf, into organic unity with the source of all that is 
finite and empirical. • 

To the question, ''What is the chief end of man?'' religion 
has universally answered, ''Man's chief end is to glorify God, 
and to enjoy Him forever," though it was left for the Westmin- 
ster divines to frame this short and comprehensive reply to the 
short but most momentous question, "What is the chief end of 
man?" — the supreme vocation, the final cause, the true nature 
of man and humanity ? 

From the empirical standpoint, the whole of modern science 
and culture are as empirical as religion — all being relative to 
man's psychological nature. On this ground alone, religion as 
the organized, long-lived and persistent self-expression of hu- 
man nature or reason, has just as valid justification as any form 
of science or intellectual culture. It can demand the exercise of 
its function as being on a par, as to rationality, with them. But 
when the thing is thought through ; when the relativity of sci- 
ence as restricted to the finite and the phenomenal is seen ; when 
the limitations of the categories which it uses are seen, then 
philosophy gives religion its absolute intellectual justification. 
To be conscious of a limit, is to have already transcended the 
limit. Even Spencer cannot avoid this confession. The finite 
is known to be finite, only because the infinite is known to be. 
The knowledge of the Infinite, and the Absolute, and the Per- 
fect, is prior to, and implied, in the knowledge of the finite as 
finite. Philosophy, as well as art and religion, bridges the gulf, 
and in doing so gives the intellectual justification of the tran- 
scendence made practically in art and religion. 

After philosophy comes the philosophy of religion, to vali- 
date its function and to make a comparative estimate of its va- 



154 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

rious forms — non-Christian and Christian, Roman and Prot- 
estant, in their function of reconciHation, of making man at- 
one with God, ''whose service is perfect freedom." 

If religion is incredible from the standpoint of modern sci- 
ence; if modern science is — though as strict science it says 
nothing in the matter — irreligious, as well as scientific, then re- 
ligion may demand that science reconcile itself with religion. 

Man, as rational dares, nay, must be religious. To put the 
matter strongly, one might rationally say that the religious inter- 
pretation of experience given by any religion of authority, pagan 
or Christian, is more concretely true than that given by any ag- 
nostic form of modern culture ; that if choice must be made be- 
tween religion and no science, or science and no religion, that 
the concretely rational and human might resolutely cling to re- 
ligion. 

"... Great God ! I'd rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn/* 

Better the man nurtured in any form of ''a religion of au- 
thority," than the man without any religious nurture. 

Religion must claim her right to be left free to perform her 
truly human function. It should first of all, to use Plato's ex- 
pression, mind its own business. Apologetics are secondary. 
The attempt to continuously re-adjust herself to the kaleido- 
scopic changes of modern culture diverts her from her proper 
function. The effect of this effort too often is the perplexity 
that baffles activity. 

"The centipede was happy quite, until the toad in fun 
Asked, pray which leg comes after which? 
Which raised her mind to such a pitch 
She lay distracted in the ditch 

Considering how to run.'' 

This doggerel, vulgar though it be, aptly depicts the condi- 
tion of very many religious men to-day, who are trying to har- 
monize their religion with modern culture. 

The truth is that the religious man should dare, first of all, 



LOISY iSS 

to be religious. He should dare to repeat to modern culture 
the words I recently saw inscribed on a sun-dial : — 

"You go by the shadow, 
I go by the Sun." 

If he needs it, he can have the psychological, the historical and 
the philosophical justification for his doing this. 

Sabatier justifies the subjective psychological side. We 
have seen the limitations of this. 

Loisy justifies it historically. The danger here is either that 
of accepting the brute-actual as the ultimate-rational, or the 
danger of the historical method — that of sitting apart, and 

"Holding no form of creed 
But contemplating all." 

If one must have an intellectual justification for being a re- 
ligious conformist, he must go to philosophy. And the Cath- 
olic philosophy of the ages gives the justification, the vindica- 
tion, the apologetics. We have objected to the reconciliation 
offered by Sabatier and Harnack, because they yield all, and re- 
tain nothing, except the reHgion of mere subjectivity. We have 
commended the practical effect, for the time, of the whole 
Ritschlian school, in enabling one to dare to have the religion 
of mere subjectivity. We have faulted it with being, in the 
long run, no more than the ostrich's device of hiding its head 
in the sand. The truth is, in fact, that in being religious, 
man has a right to be erect. 

If there be any warfare between religion and an irreligious 
modern culture, then it behooves men of all forms of religion to 
join hands and forces. 

"The religion of the spirit" is as incredible to an irreligious 
culture as any "religion of authority." The religions of author- 
ity — Romanism and Protestantism — should in every way pos- 
sible recognize each other as allies in the contest for man's 
inalienable right to religious nurture. 

Man, humanity is not, as agnostic modern culture asserts, 



156 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

securus adversus Deum. Man, humanity is only securus cum 
Deo. Religion is the practical bond that realizes this organic 
unity, and makes one secure and free m the experience of a re- 
ligion of authority. Let the most cultivated man, the man fully 
abreast with modern thought and science, then, frankly and un- 
reservedly dare to be religious — to be a conformist to some form 
of a religion of authority, and therein to find his most concrete 
form of freedom. Let him say to modern culture and science : 

"You go by the shadow, 
I go by the Sun," 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HISTORICAL METHOD 

(i) Scientific 
(2) Philosophical 

The question of the old catechism — who made you or the 
world or anything in the world, is out of date in this age. At 
least the answer given would be that of Topsy : ''Nobody made 
me, Tse growed." Nobody has made anybody. Every body, 
every form of life, every form of human belief and institution 
has "growed'' — evolved, developed out of lower forms, and 
these out of still lower forms and so on ad infinitiim, so that 
''origin'' in its original sense is nonsense. As in Zeno's para- 
dox, that the swift-footed Achilles could never catch the slow- 
footed tortoise, on the hypothesis of the infinite divisibility of 
space, so here no origin can be reached because of the infinite 
regress in time. There is always a past, which is the cause of 
the present. But that past was once a present and had a causal 
past. But practically some empirical "given" is generally as- 
sumed. At best this corresponds to the smart boy's answer to 
the question, "Who made you?" "God made me so big'' 
measuring off the length of his arm, — "and I grew the rest 
myself." 

Let us accept the current dictum that ours is "the historical 
age" in contrast with the theological age and that of the eight- 
eenth century of abstract rationalism. It is needless to say that 
scientific men have fully abandoned the categories of "the age 
of reason," which looked upon everything as full-formed, defi- 
nite and distinct, while ignoring the constitutive relations be- 
tween them. It is only an anachronism, when they appeal to 
this abstract reason for a reason for any doctrine. The modern 

157 



IS8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

scientific view is always comparative, genetic and historical. It 
deals with relations between things as constitutive of the things, 
and with the history of any creed or deed, as its explanation. 
That is, it uses ''the historical method" of explaining every- 
thing. 

What is meant by the historical method ? 

History means, primarily, a narration of the chronological 
stages through which anything has passed. It is the narrative 
of change. Human history, however, is no longer merely a 
narrative of kings, popes and lords many — Carlyle's great- 
man theory. It is rather an attempted reconstruction of the 
changes in the whole concrete life of the people of a given epoch, 
as connected with preceding and succeeding epochs — each 
change in the social whole being accounted for by the changes 
in the preceding and environing social wholes. That is, it has 
abandoned the eighteenth century individualistic, for the modern 
socialistic, views of man. History is still the narrative of 
changes, but of changes with long-lived social organisms. 

Method is a systematic way of procedure in the study of 
any subject. Mathematics is the method employed by science, 
in physics. So history is the method now employed in the study 
of human institutions. That is, the ''what" of anything is 
sought in its. past history. The history of a thing gives the 
causes and nature of the thing. Thus the historical method 
applied to any creed or organization, gives its explanation by 
means of their historical origin and series of transformations. 
The how it came about, tells what it is. 

In the use of this method, the look is too often only back- 
ward, while the forward look demanded by the truly human is 
neglected. That is the vice of the empirical school of which we 
shall shortly speak — the vice of banishing teleology from the 
historical explanation of human institutions — of neglecting the 
force of ideals in lifting upwards, while seeing with keen vision 
only the mechanical forces at work to force forward — forward, 
that is, in time and space, for there can be no moral or human 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 159 

forward without ideals and goals. In fact the historical school, 
like that of physical science, has come to accept Comte's three 
stages or methods of thought : the Theological, the Metaphysi- 
cal and the Positive} 

Roughly speaking, according to Comte, the Theological 
dominated the seventeenth century, the Metaphysical the eight- 
eenth century, the Positive coming into predominance in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century. The theological mode of 
thought looked upon nature as ruled by many supernatural 
beings, and finally by one God. A supernatural revelation gave 
men dogmatic truth, and a dogmatic philosophy dominated their 
study of nature — both as to efficient and final causes. 

Then came the metaphysical age. The unhistorical eight- 
eenth century set up the principle of an abstract reason. Its 
belief in the absolute truths of reason was just as dogmatic as 
the theological view. The light of reason was considered the 
sufficient and never failing source of truth. The absolutely 
certain principles of reason, gave the standard by which to 
weigh and reject political and theological dogmas, and all the 
institutions they represented. They also furnished the means 
for building brand new forms — new governments and social 
institutions, a new religion and code of morals.^ Nothing need 
to grow, it could be manufactured to order, under the light of 
the natural reason of man. Natural religion, or the religion of 
reason, took the form of Deism in England. Natural rights, 

^ Comte's Cours de Philosophie Positive, cf. Appendix, note 5. 

^ Bentham is a good representative of this view. He had a contempt 
for the past and was without any historical sense in regard to the 
growth of institutions. He thought that he could manufacture codes 
and constitutions to order under the sole rubric of utility. They did not 
need to grow, as the common law and the constitution of England had 
done. That was wasting time. It was his ungratified ambition to be 
permitted to prepare a new constiution and code of laws for his own, 
or some other country. He might have profited by Locke's disastrous 
folly in preparing "the fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas," a 
century before. 



i6o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

supplanted the conferred and acquired rights of citizenship, and 
natural law ruled in the world of nature — the God of Deism 
being an Absentee. 

Truths of reason were just as dogmatic, uncriticised cate- 
' gories of thought, as those of the theological stage. The sub- 
lime, absolute faith of its exponents in the deliverances of reason 
was scarcely less than that of the supranaturalists in revealed 
truths. They found mathematical proof of everything thus pos- 
sible. In the study of nature they were the founders of mathe- 
matical physics. But even here Comte places them in the meta- 
physical stage, because they believed in efficient natural forces. 
At bottom, this was identical with the theological metaphysics. 
Phenomena of nature were supposed to be the effects of some 
efficient causes — physical force, vital force, plastic force, tenden- 
cies of nature, the force of gravitation, the vis medicatrix naturce. 
Thus they gave as the efficient cause of water rising in a pump, 
the fact that nature abhors a vacuum. Disease was as real an 
entity for them, as the wrath of a god for the theological dog- 
matists. But Comte held all efficient cause to be unreal. 
''What are called causes," he says, "whether these are first or 
final causes, are absolutely inaccessible, and the search for them 
is a vain search." When Positivism is reached, men give up all 
belief in causes and attend only to the relations of similarity and 
succession of phenomena. 

Science is bidden to abandon all these personified abstrac- 
tions as being no more real or knowable than angels or demons. 
Comte banished all anthropomorphism from science as an 
intellectual sin, as science had banished it from theology.^ 
Though Comte's phenomenalism and positivism — practically 

^An unrighteous remnant of metaphysics sfill lurks in marry scien- 
tific conceptions The reality of atoms, forces, efficient causes, laws 
of nature, were held by Comte to belong to the metaphysical stage of 
thought. Science should only deal with phenomena and their suc- 
cession and coexistence. "UAtome et la force! Voila Uunivers." 
Positivism stigmatizes this as metaphysics, little better than Theology. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD i6i 

identical with that of Neo-Kantians — is rapidly becoming the 
regnant view in science, it would not be correct to characterize 
the nineteenth century by the term Positivism. It would be 
better to characterize it as ''the historical age" and reserve the 
term Positivism for the twentieth century. 

The method of the nineteenth century has been the genetic 
one — an attempt to understand everything, especially every in- 
stitution, by a patient regressive study of its antecedent forms 
and environment. Springing as it did from romanticism in 
literature, and idealism in philosophy, the historical method, in 
its earliest stages, directly contravened positivism by its use of 
both efiScient and final causes. It dealt primarily with human 
interests and human institutions. It had the humanitarian heart 
and humanitarian ideals. All history showed the efficient forces 
leading man upwards towards his ideals. It sought for the 
essence of humanity in the lower stages of these institutions, and 
then traced this essence manifesting itself in freer and loftier 
forms. History was the biography of humanity, and its story 
always had significance and worth. The human reason too had 
its biography. But this was always the history of the implicit 
reason coming to be more explicit, both on its speculative and 
practical side, through the hard fought struggles to attain its 
majority. It was not looked upon as a miraculous birth from 
something lower and heterogeneous, but as a process of self- 
development. Thus this method still kept the metaphysical ele- 
ments of potentialities, causes, tendencies of nature, of the 
eighteenth century view. But it put these in human nature, 
rather than in physical nature, as that had done. It found, the 
efficient cause of any state or epoch or institution, to be the 
genius of its people, the spirit of the times, the essence of the 
institution — potent potentialities that were self-developing 
towards their goals. The theme was that of ideal men strug- 
gling through history towards self-realization. Its tone was 
thoroughly idealistic and optimistic. Great and inspiring was 
the work done in this its pristine form and vigor. Nothing 

II 



i62 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

human was alien to it, and so the workers probed into all pos- 
sible archaeological material — back to the time "when Adam 
delved and Eve span," of every age and country and institu- 
tion. Its vast scholarly labors were animated by a love of the 
truly human, in however lowly form it might be found. It 
idealized all past forms. 

But the spirit of Positivism in physical science did not fail 
to find entrance into the historical school. This change was 
aided by that of its own inner dialectic. It found any form of 
human institutions to be relative to its own time and circum- 
stances. Circumstances began to overshadow the human ele- 
ment — the spirit of the people, the genius of institutions — 
which had at first functioned in bringing the on-sweeping tide 
of development. The insular empiricism of England filtered 
into the pores of German idealism. This found the ground pre- 
pared for it in Kant's First Critique, and invited all to go back 
from the Kant of the Second and Third Critiques to the Kant 
of the First Critique, and finally to Comte's Positivism, thus 
effectually banishing metaphysics in their study both of man and 
nature. 

"Apostles of Circumstance" arose in their own midst. The 
environment, not the spirit of a people, caused the develop- 
ment of language, morals and institutions. Neither conscious 
nor unconscious purpose is to be seen throughout the trans- 
formation. "Climate, food, soil and the general aspect of 
nature"^ are the four circumstances that Buckle gives as the 
efficient causes of the civilization of England. Spencer does 
not get beyond the category of circumstances. The vital seed, 
germ, essence, spirit is finally smothered by the ever increasing 
husk of circumstance (environment). Everything is reduced 
to circumstances — standing round what but other circumstance ! 
Great verily is circumstance ! It no longer takes a man, much 
less a God, to beget a man and his civilizing, moralizing institu- 
tions. The teleological judgment was banished, while the rem- 
^ Buckle's History of Civilization in England, II, Chap. II. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 163 

nant of the metaphysical stage of science was kept in the form 
of the causal judgment. Circumstances caused the changes. 
But Positivism had ruled causality out, as a remnant of the met- 
aphysical stage of thought. Science had become positive ; had 
banished the reified abstraction of causality and decided to hold 
to the facts — phenomena and their sequences. Thus logically, 
no universal judgments are possible. Everything is relative, 
nothing causal. That is the hereditas damnosa of theology and 
rationalism, which has finally been foresworn by the leaders in 
science. 

So too in history, it was found, that every form of every in- 
stitution was merely relative — the literature of England relative 
to the social environment (Taine) as that is relative to ''food, 
soil, climate and general aspect of nature," (Buckle) as these 
are relative to geological changes, which are relative — well, 
there is a never-ending regress of circumstances that stand 
round no beginning and are leading to no end in particular. It 
all depends upon circumstance. And finally, when relativity 
is taken in earnest, there is no dependence, no causal depend- 
ence of any one thing upon another and the historical method, 
along with the historical spirit, has given place to Positivism 
even in the humanities. We have now the Science of History, 
or scientific history, which, like physical science, has banished 
to the theological limbo, both efficient and final causes. 

Man, the truly human, is no longer in history, much less 
God. Circumstances, with no other than ''chronological se- 
quence and co-existence," well, the world is full of relativities, 
and it is the duty of the science of history to invent economical 
formulae of description, which are no longer causal laws, but 
mental, conceptual short-hand descriptions. In history, and 
especially in sociology, we have marvelously helpful generaliza- 
tions; intellectual, conceptual laws of social statics that have 
been of the greatest practical service, and profound and true 
construction of laws of Dynamic Sociology (Ward), with all 
the dynamite of casual efficiency taken out of them. Then we 



i64 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

have the Economical Interpretation of History, where the one 
dynamic circumstance is man's need and greed for gold or 
its goods, rather than for the truly human good (Giddings). 
None can do other than admire and be thankful for the good 
work done by this school of Positivists in Sociology. But we 
must ask no questions as to efficient and final causes. These 
terms, when used from the exigencies of language and of the 
understanding of men, are at best but figurative. We are only 
in the sphere of relativity, of the sequence and co-existence of 
phenomena in time. Time is the one universal maw, in which 
all things rise, ripen and rot — all being relative stages of rela- 
tivity. The old mythology of Chronos devouring his off- 
spring is upon us. Why anything should rise and ripen rather 
than rot, only God wots, if God there be, where there is naught 
but relativity. This is a question that no scientific historian will 
ask, much less deign to answer. It is politely referred to theo- 
logians and philosophers who profess to know more than the 
phenomenal, to those who 

" — doubt not, thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs." 

We shall note this limitation of positivism in history later 
on. We shall ask whether it is truly human not to ask this 
question, and whether the rise and ripening of human institu- 
tions are explicable without a more or less conscious appre- 
hension of purpose — of the why and whereto of humanity's 
struggle out of beast towards God-sonship. But to return to 
the historical school, with the historical sense — for positivism in 
history is no longer "the historical school," and we now have 
the Science of History, 

The historical school revolutionized the abstract doctrinaire 
view of all human institutions. It studied their past to under- 
stand and explain their present forms. It could not accept 
its mechanical conception of reason, and its mechanical ability 
to manufacture new and true forms for state, religion, and so- 
ciety, without any organic relation to past forms. Freed from 
the cynical estimate of the past, from the conceited rationalism 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 165 

of the "Age of Reason/' the Romantic-IdeaHstic school be- 
lieved in the dynamics of life. They believed not in a dead 
past, but in the present, living only as in vital continuity with 
the past. The mood was that of a lofty humanitarianism as 
opposed to the cynical utilitarianism which said, let the dead 
bury the dead, but follow thou thine own reason and comfort. 
They recognized that they were the heirs of the ages past — that 
they had entered into a heritage, won by the toil and life-blood 
of their ancestors. They sought to re-discover and re-construct 
the dead past of humanity and make it a living present. They 
had no merely archaeological interest. They had a generic hu- 
man interest. The past was their own past and, as such, the 
parent of their own present. They sought to honor their par- 
ents in seeking to reproduce a picture of their life and times. 
Even if their ancestors were savages, they were noble savages, 
and they sought for the essential human, rather than for the 
accidental brutish, in them. Thus only could they account for 
the humane and the noble in their descendants. 

Humanity was one organic life, battling for development 
through the ages. They would read — re-discover the minutest 
circumstances in the life and times of the earlier forms of this 
human process of self-realization. 

Boundless wealth of painstaking scholarship was spent in 
the drudgery of the details of research, to trace the growth and 
development of present forms of language, literature, art and 
social institution — all for the love of the truly human ; all for 
the sake of appreciating the heritage of the present from the 
past. 

In jurisprudence, the historical school held that law, like 
the language of a people, is the result of the genius of a people ; 
the forms that its life adopts for self-preservation and self- 
realization. All forms of law are regarded with respect. Ear- 
lier forms are the parents of present forms. No modern form 
is absolutely novel. To understand the modern form, there 
came the work of historical or comparative jurisprudence. 



i66 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

In the study of ethics, sociology, psychology, politics; of 
every form in which the human spirit has actualized itself, the 
historical or genetic method was applied. Their past history 
became their biographical genesis. They all, like Topsy, 
"growed." And the narration of their changes is their histor- 
ical explanation. It is needless to go into detail as to how far 
this method invaded and transformed nearly all departments of 
thought, including even that of physical science. This has been 
well done by the late Professor Henry Sidgwick.^ 

It is needless, too, to dwell upon the worth of the work done 
by this method, in all the fields where it has been employed. 
This has been done so often and so well by its enthusiastic ex- 
ponents, that it has become almost a truism that this dominant 
method has the final word to say on all things that have a his- 
tory. 

In science, evolution is a form of the historical method ap- 
plied to nature. Nothing new is ever created in the realm of 
nature, but all things come to be by almost imperceptible 
changes. And then, too, nothing is what it is except by means 
of its relations to other series of changes. The whole point of 
view is that of ever-changing relations, between atoms, forces 
and things in a universe of changing forces, so correlated, that 
no one force or thing is independent. That is, the categories 
used in describing the changes of form in nature, are those of 
relativity — cause and effect, thing and environment, substance 
and qualities, essence and phenomena, potentiality and actual- 
ity; endless mediation through relations between forces which 
are only transient forms of one force. 

Students of human history too often fall into the use of 
these categories of physical science. This is the vice of what is 
called scientific history, or the science of history. It treats man 
and men as things, which change and grow only as they are 
changed by other things. Mechanical necessity is the god 

^Philosophy, its Scope and Relations, by the late Professor Henry 
Sidgwick. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 167 

which rules in all the changing forms of human creeds and 
deeds. It seeks to trace the development of human institu- 
tions by a study of the external conditions of their various 
stages of change. It neglects the spiritual element that has 
ever been the life that has reacted upon and modified the en- 
vironment. It neglects the power of ideals — the implicit im- 
pulse towards fuller rationality, immanent in all the merely ex- 
ternal changes, that changes them from mere change to a de- 
velopment. 

At least this seems to have become the dominant tendency of 
the school. Properly speaking there are two schools who use 
the historical method: (i) The realistic and (2) the idealistic, 
or the (i) scientific and the (2) philosophical schools. 

Section i. The Scientific School of the Historical 

Method. 

I. Let us make a critical examination of the limitations of 
the empirical school, which drive us to the philosophical school 
for a more concrete view of the how and the why of human 
institutions. To do this we may first give a very brief state- 
ment of the problems and methods of (a) Science, (&) Philoso- 
phy. 

(a) The problem of science is to give a classified and sys- 
tematized short-hand description of all physical phenomena — 
that is, it seeks to make generalizations as to the sequences and 
relations between phenomena, that may be called laws of nature. 
There can be no hesitancy in the acceptance of the magnificent 
and colossal results of science in the fields of nature and of his- 
tory. It is not the methods and results of science that are criti- 
cised, but the metaphysical theories of many of its exponents, 
who are loudest in their objurgation of metaphysics. Their 
ontology, or doctrine of what is real, is that atoms, even though 
they bear the mark of being ''manufactured articles" ; that mo- 
tion, force, cause, space and time are not only empirical but 



i68 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

absolute realities; that laws of nature are causally efficient 
workers; in a word that their phenomenal world is the real 
world, and that their conceptual formulas of description are the 
ultimate explanation of all concrete reality. 

Not only have they misrepresented science to the popular 
mind, but they are themselves deluded into the metaphysical 
belief in all these anthropomorphic superstitions- — veritable 
fetishes. Those who are easily the intellectual leaders in the 
work of science have discarded all this bad metaphysics. They 
may or may not be agnostic. Their science as such, however, 
has nothing to do with agnosticism. They frankly say that sci- 
ence has nothing to do with atom, mass, energy, laws of nature 
as real entities. These conceptions, along with that of evolu- 
tion, are only used as an economic, conceptual short-hand for 
resuming, classifying and holding data of phenomenal experi- 
ence, which data are the sense-impressions of conscious sub- 
jects. These data they construct by means of the conceptual 
short-hand, into a systematic and useful description of them. 

Thus they say that science has nothing to do with entities or 
with e-fficient causes any more than with final causes ; that what 
we call physical forces are simply symbols, like x, y, z, which 
help us to construct relations between the data of the sense-per- 
ceptions — of a percipient. "There are no causes and effects in 
nature. Nature simply is our sensations. Cause and effect 
are a mental short-hand for reproducing the facts." ''Causes 
and effects, therefore, are things of thought, having an eco- 
nomical office."^ They have generally come to accept John 
Stuart Mill's definition of matter as a ''permanent possibility of 
sensation" — in a percipient, and atoms as thought symbols, like 
X and y, useful working tools in analysis and classification. 
Atoms are not some real things in space. They are supersensu- 
ous, and have no real existence apart from man's conceptive 
faculty. The determining compulsion or necessity of laws of 
nature is only a logical necessity — one of consistency of our 

* Cf. Mach's Science of Mechanics, pp. 483-485. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 169 

conceptual language. In fine, they have purged such terms as 
cause, energy, force, and attraction of the superstitious animism 
still put into them by the metaphysical scientists. Idolaters of 
reified abstractions, such exponents of science, who are neither 
few nor insignificant, are accountable for much of the poor and 
anti-theistic metaphysics of the day. They need to go to school 
to the others who have done much of the higher work of sci- 
ence. These latter, while using the same terminology and insist- 
ing upon the application of the mechanical view to all phases of 
sensuous reality, have declined to reify this terminology and 
theory, and thus to recrudesce the superstitions of animism. 
They affirm that science is only a descriptive, and not a causal 
explanation, and that its work is that inventing short-hand 
economical formulae for the description of the course of events.^ 
That is, they call modern science and history back to Positivism 
as a method, not as a metaphysic. 

Science is an analysis of experience to discover sequences 
and system in all sensuous phenomena. But it is a higher sort 
of knowledge than that of mere sense perception, which gives a 
collection of things and events. Science seeks the relations be- 
tween all things. It finds things, indeed, to be really constituted 
by relations. Nothing in the world is single. A depends upon B. 
Every thing depends upon other things. There are no self-sub- 
sisting, independent individual things. Every thing is only phe- 
nomenal — a passing form of change of relations or a transient 
form of sensuous phenomena. Science seeks the laws of these 
changes — the universal throbbing through the particulars and 
constitutive of them, being in this way a return to scholastic 
realism. However, this conception of the laws of nature being 
real forces, and doing real things, is not held by the chiefs of 
science. It is a legacy from the metaphysical age bequeathed 
to the popular mind, and to the semi-popular mind of a large 
number of scientific men. It is still often heard said that the 
laws of nature do so and so. But laws of nature are, for ad- 

^ Cf. Karl Pearson's Grammar of Science. 



170 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

vanced scientific thought, simply brief, short-hand descriptions 
of large ranges of sequences of our sense-impressions. Gravi- 
tation does not attract one mass to another. Gravitation is not 
an actual force. The law of gravitation is an hypothetical re- 
lation that best describes a number of changes.^ 

Science is much more than "organized common sense." 
Science verily transforms the world of perception, as any text- 
book on physics will show. Things are reduced to quantities of 
forces and relations, so that the water known by the chemist — 
H2O — is no longer the water as known by perception. The 
chemist's analysis of it must seem to be a fiction to common 
sense, unless it accepts the chemist's knowledge on mere au- 
thority. 

Science does its work with certain principles of knowledge. 
It is dogmatic in its use of these categories, and therefore has 
no true valuation of them. There is, however, one of its chief 
categories that has been subjected to such criticism as to eviscer- 
ate it of all its primitive significance — that is, the category of 
causality. Modern science at first used this conception as that 
of a real force doing something, causing the various forms of 
change. But cause is no longer conceived as a separate thing 
acting upon or producing another passive thing called effect. 
The dialectic forced this conception into that of reciprocity. 
The cause cannot be a cause without an efifect. But the cause 
thus depends upon the efifect, which thus becomes the cause of 
the cause as well as its efifect. Then the idea of real efficiency in 
cause was easily dispelled. Thus N is the cause of O. But N 
itself is only an effect of M and that of L and so on not only 
through the alphabet, but throughout all the changes of time. 
Nowheres is anything truly causal to be found. Again, scien- 
tific men found that this regress ad inHniHim led logically to a 
First and real cause, so long as cause was conceived on the analo- 
gy of will. But to-day that ghost of the old spiritualism has 
been banished from Science, and we have the harmless but help- 
^ Karl Pearson's Grammar of Science, p. 86. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 171 

ful conception of cause as the uniform antecedence of one event 
in relation to another. The same evisceration of the conception 
of force has also been made, taking all force out of it. So also 
laws of nature are only short-hand descriptive formula for hold- 
ing together, in thought, a lot of sense impressions. Science 
has purged its categories of their earlier anthropomorphism. 
Kant, Comte and Mill differ but little in their eviscerating caus- 
ality of all causal efficiency. It becomes simply the best work- 
ing formula of systematization of changes.^ 

As Bentham said the word ''ought," ought to be banished 
from ethics, so they say that causal efficiency ought to be 
banished from the scientific conception of causality. Cause 
and effect are no longer considered as distinct things, but merely 
as the earlier and later stages in a continuoiis process. Science 
has not to discover that one thing causes another. There is no 
one and another — with intervals or break of space and time be- 
tween. All is motion, process Trdvra pit. The stream glides 
and forever glides, and science seeks only to discover general 
formula of description of this gliding process. Science thus 
becomes only the highest intellectual form of description. The 
earlier conceptions of laws of nature, efficient forces and phys- 
ical necessity have passed away, and we have only uniformities 
in nature as our best descriptive formula. The best type of sci- 
entific explanation, is that of mathematical physics, or me- 

^ Professor Ernst Mach was one of the earliest of scientists to pro- 
pound this view of the mechanical theory minus the mythology which is 
held by many physicists. Mach considers all the conceptions of matter, 
force, cause, atoms, mass as having a merely economical office — as good 
intellectual machinery for a useful representation of an abstract phase of 
the universe, but in no way real (Cf. Mach's The Science of Mechanics, 
Chaps. IV, V and Appendix). In the preface to the third edition of this 
work he refers to Karl Pearson's Grammar of Science as representing 
essentially similar views, banishing metaphysics from the concepts of 
mechanics, which are never perceptions or any part of sensuous reality. 
(Cf. et. Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism for application of this view 
of the mechanical theory, against mechanical metaphysics.) 



172 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

chanics. Hence the mechanical view of the world that science 
aims at in its descriptions. 

Laplace's Mechanique Celeste was such a description of the 
starry worlds above, that there was no need of the hypothesis of 
a God. But to-day the bad metaphysics of the earlier form of 
mechanics, which caused it to be a veritable nightmare to the 
moral nature of man, is passing away.^ It is now recognized 
that the materialism of earlier science was only metaphysics. 
Matter, atoms, laws, causes are all now emptied of the meta- 
physics which made them so obnoxious to the human spirit. 
They are all merely economic, conceptual forms that science 
uses for symbolical description. Matter is non-matter in 
motion. Atoms, ether-squirts, vortex-rings, mass-points, elec- 
trons and ions all mental conceptions; mathematical ideals 
for a mechanical description of the routine of sense impressions, 
and not themselves sense-impressions, i. e., not sensuous realities 
for science. At first they were fetishes, now they are 
acknowledged to be only the most convenient and efficient 
fictions. 

The mechanical theory of the physical universe, emptied of 
its metaphysics, is undoubtedly a most useful theory, for a de- 
scription of one phase of reality. There are valid reasons for 
pressing its use into biology and all forms of human history. 
Only let its limitations be recognized and then, within its sphere, 
scientists can say "so much mechanics, so much knowledge and 
so much pre-diction." Emptied of its metaphysics, as it now is, 
by men of science who think — as Ostwald, Mach, Kirchhoff, 
Kelvin, Heimholtz, it is emptied of its horror to the human 
spirit. It is a useful artificial, conceptual contrivance for a 
practical purpose. It is so much knowledge, but only of a cer- 
tain kind, under presuppositions and categories which are 
utterly inadequate to describe the full, concrete reality of the 
universe. For the universe is not a mere quantity, and wher- 

^ Cf. Appendix, Note 4 for quotation from Romanes expressing this 
effect. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 173 

ever we pass out of the quantitative view of reality, we pass 
beyond the limits of mechanism. At least mechanism becomes 
subordinate to the categories of life, teleology, and ultimately, 
to that of self-consciousness. 

(&) But with this we pass to Philosophy as a form of know- 
ing reality that transcends that of science, as science does of 
that of naive common sense. Here we must insist that it is 
not another world that is known, but it is the same experience 
that is known in a higher form. We cannot accept the ''divide 
and rule" offer of science, when she offers us the unknowable 
and keeps the knowable, as she means when she says "give 
us the relative and phenomenal sense world and you may have 
the absolute, noumenal world." Philosophy is not the knowl- 
edge of some special province of experience, but a special kind 
of knowledge of all experience, as a totality or an organic sys- 
tem. 

The problem of philosophy is the comprehension of con- 
crete experience, as science is that of an abstract phase of it. 
That is, its problem is the ultimate nature of reality, in the 
duality of all experience. This duality is that of subject and 
object, of knower and known. It may begin with epistemology 
— the theory of knowing, or a criticism and organization of the 
various concepts or categories used in knowing. But it goes 
on to ontology, or the science of real being as known most 
truly by the highest category. It shows the implicit contradic- 
tions of the lower categories used by science, criticising them- 
selves into categories of real causality, real independence or 
self-relation, teleology, life, volitional mind, or absolute Self- 
conscious Personality, in the light of which all lower forms of 
knowing are to be re-interpreted. It is, I have said, an at- 
tempted knowledge of concrete experience. This concrete ex- 
perience includes both subject and object, knower and known as 
indissoluble elements of experience. Science abstracts the ob- 
jects from this concrete experience, and treats the physical 



174 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

world as an independent form of existence. It forgets that 
nothing external exists except ''plus me,'' — plus the knower. 

In concrete experience the known cannot be separated from 
the knower, except by an abstraction, and that made by a con- 
scious mind. The phenomenal world is that which appears to 
mind, or is a manifestation of self-consciousness. The object, 
the known, the external world apart from the knower, is not the 
real. The world minus the knower is an abstraction, and 
science of this abstraction is abstract science. If the real were 
only that which exists in space, and both the real and space 
existed independently of the knower, then science might claim to 
know the real. Even that pronounced empiricist, the late Pro- 
fessor Bain, says : "We are incapable of discussing the ex- 
istence of an independent material world; the very act is a 
contradiction. We can only speak of a world presented to our 
minds/' Now philosophy contends against the leaving of this 
^'plus me" factor, this mental coefficient, out of the total expe- 
rience to be known. And it contends still more strongly against 
the attempt to evolve this ''plus me" element out of the abstract 
external world — the conscious out of the unconscious, or to treat 
it as mere epiphenomenon or by-product, a quantite neglige- 
able, 

"Am I the abandoned orphan of blind chance 
Dropped by wild atoms in disordered dance, 
Or, from an endless chain of causes wrought, 
And of unthinking substance, born with thought?" 

And yet that is all that rigid metaphysical science can make 
of man — a mere part of an independent physical universe — 
though, on its own categories and by its own confession, it 
can never know anything except the causally dependent and can 
never, by its regress ad infinitum, get a universe. Hence, it 
should never dare formulate universal and invariable laws of 
uniformities. Relativity, within the realm of abstraction from 
concrete experience, is the self-imposed limitation of scien- 
tific knowledge. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 175 

Rigid science, as a knowledge of this phenomenal abstrac- 
tion, can know nothing of the moral. The ''ought to be" is not 
a space occupying thing and so cannot be known. Will and 
motive, life and development, thought and self-activity are not 
sensuous phenomena and so cannot be known by science except 
as epiphenomena, parallel to, but with no causal connection 
with, physical processes, which are all that science proposes to 
know. 

Soul is thus bowed out of man, as by La Mettrie in his 
UHomme Machine, Thought is pitched out of the brain, as 
one of its secretions, by Biichner in his coarse way of stating 
the more refined views of some forms of the new psychology. 
Biichner said: ''Ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke." Cabanis 
said: ''Religion is the product of the smaller intestines." 
Rigid science does not cover concrete experience and therefore 
does not know real reality. Philosophy claims to approxi- 
mate towards a comprehension of the whole of experience as 
an organic system, and then of the parts of experience, not in 
abstraction from, but as organic members of this organic sys- 
tem. Its method is that of the analysis of any part of experi- 
ence, ''flower in the crannied wall," or a Jesus on the cross, to 
see what the "it is" impHes, in order to be what it is. Then it 
follows these necessary implications until it comes to the ex- 
plicit totality or ultimate ground, of all these existences — out of 
which they arise, and in which they "live and move and have 
their being." This is not a mere empirical analysis of sensuous 
experience. For this is not, as Kant, in spite of his First 
Critique, showed once for all, the whole of experience. It is 
at best the woof, of which the eternal and necessary warp is 
non-sensuous. Time and space, quantity, causality, life, devel- 
opment, mind are the non-sensuous elements of concrete ex- 
perience. 

Philosophy aims at reaching the crowning and begetting 
summit of these categories by an analysis of experience, and 
then seeks to return synthetically upon all the abstract phases 



176 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of knowledge, and reinterpret them in the light of the organic 
system of which they are members. Every finite thing, every 
abstraction is imperfect. Only in the light of the perfect can 
their degree of reality be estimated. Thus philosophy deals 
with the same world, the same experience that is the subject 
series of things ; the second a connection of all physical things, 
abstracted from mind or consciousness, while the third gives us 
the infinite connectedness of concrete experience as an organic 
system of reality — in which there are no merely mechanical 
parts, but rather organic members. The way up from the 
''flower in the crannied wall," must reach its absolute limit — 
God, ere the way downward can return and really know the 
flower as it is, — its grade of reality as an organic phase of 
absolute reality. That is, philosophy comes to criticise the 
hypostatized abstractions of science, as science does those of 
common sense. And it does this by the reverse method of 
science as stated by Spencer: 'We must interpret the more 
developed by the less developed."^ Philosophy seeks to inter- 
pret the lower by the higher, by virtue of which alone, as its 
teleological cause, the lower has the grade of reality is now has 
and has developed from a still lower form. 

Evolution 

To return to the historical method, so far as that works 
with the concepts of physical science, we find that its central 
concept is that of development or evolution. We have found 
that under the conceptions of mechanism, there is no place for 
design for spontaneous or organic activity. We have found the 
tendency to press this method into the study of biology, physi- 
ology and all the forms of human institutions. We merely add 
that this conception of "so much mechanism, so much science" 
is too often a regnant conception with those who exploit the 
historical method. It will be well, then, to examine the theory 

^ Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, Chap. I. Sec. 2. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 177 

of Mechanical Evolution, There is evolution and evolution. 
We need not treat of the popular conception of evolution, nor 
of the philosophical form of the evolutionary view of the uni- 
verse — for which all need go back to Aristotle. Nor need we 
refer to religious conceptions of development — to such as that 
of Drummond's attempt to apply the language and conceptions 
of science to religious experience. In a popular way we all 
believe in development Men have always believed in some sort 
of a development. Aristotle's most comprehensive and defi- 
nitely concrete doctrine of development has had its disciples in 
all ages. 

But speaking of the strict scientific theory of development, 
we may say that it often passes beyond its legitimate function 
of a piece of intellectual machinery for classification of facts 
and their temporal sequences of its abstract world. When it 
is taken beyond this, as too often it is by the rank and file of 
scientists, it becomes metaphysical. It is propounded as a 
causal explanation of the whole concrete experience; some- 
times as an actually efficient law or real force that holds every- 
thing within its mechanical grip. Thus hypostatizing its ab- 
stract conceptions of an abstract phase of the world, it makes 
gods many, or one almighty force, and gives every possible 
reason for protest against the dead mechanism it offers us as 
the actual, concrete world. 

The theist may accept the most rigidly mechanical view of 
evolution as to the chronological sequences of all changes, even 
in the organic world of life and mind and its institutions. But 
this theory, when offered as a full and final explanation of con- 
crete reality, is rightly abhorrent to all who hold to the dis- 
tinctively human and spiritual in experience. 

But Mach, and a host of the leaders of science, are pro- 
testing against this reification of mere mental machinery, of 
mathematical models. As Mach says: "Purely mechanical 
phenomena do not exist. . . . They are abstractions." 'The 
mechanical theory of nature is an artificial conception. The 

12 



178 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

science of mechanics does not comprise the foundations, no, 
nor even a part of the world, but only an aspect of it."^ All its 
concepts, from that of the unseen atom and gemmule up to 
that of the survival of the fittest, are held as purely mental 
conceptions for facilitating a short-hand resume or descrip- 
tion of an abstract aspect of concrete reality. And the mechan- 
ical mythology is classed with animistic religions as fantastic 
exaggerations of an incomplete perception.^ As a metaphys- 
ical theory, held by the rank and file of scientific men, mechan- 
ical evolution is a form of impersonal pantheism. 

Confined to its legitimate role, all must recognize its im- 
mense service in the cause of science. We are all evolutionists, 
in the strict scientific sense of the term. We believe that even 
its mechanical form should impose itself upon all life and his- 
tory — or rather upon an abstract phase of all life and history. 
The more its formula can cover the more we have of that sort 
of knowledge. It is not against mechanical evolution as such 
that protests, moral and intellectual, should be made. It is only 
when the formulae of a mechanical evolution are held to give 
us the full explanation of any organic development, that intel- 
lectual criticism of its concepts is in order. Let it be limited 
to merely mechanical conceptions. 

Then we must see that pure mechanism can only cover the 
quantitative aspects of reality. But when we come to organic 
aspects we find qualitative changes ; something new being born 
out of the old, for which there are no mechanical equivalents. 
We must pass out of identity to difference and yet keep a con- 
tinuity in the higher or more complex forms. That is, we have 
more than mere quantitative changes, or else we have no real 
development. Development implies progress, and progress 
implies change towards an end. Obnoxious as the term is to 
scientific men, we must insist that not a step forward can be 
taken without the use of teleology or final cause, i, e., the end 

^ Cf. Mach's Science of Mechanics, Chap. IV, iv. 
^ Ihid.j p. 464. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 179 

towards which things are developing. Without this concep- 
tion of an end there can be nothing but change. Without a 
goal, there can be no progress. And this end, or goal or final 
cause is not a present sensuous thing. 

Topsy grows — becomes more of a girl than she was when 
in the cradle. For mechanical evolution the problem is how 
has Topsy now become greater than Topsy then. The solu- 
tion is merely a question of addition. Topsy now=Topsy then 
-[-environment. Or "consider the lillies of the field, how they 
grow.'' Answer, a bulb and environment. The difference 
then comes from a quantitative external environment. The 
bigger, brawnier, brainier Topsy is simply a novel, fortuitous 
readjustment of previous quantitative elements — an idiosyn- 
crasy, i e., a peculiar mingling of already existing elements. 
For science demands the metaphysical faith that there can 
never be any increase or diminution of the quantity of matter. 
Surely, if Topsy's brain ever became adequate to understand 
the rigid scientific account of her growth, she would exclaim : 

"Am I th' abandoned orphan of blind chance 
Dropped by wild atoms in disordered dance?" 

And yet, that is just the solution, in rigid terms, given by 
mechanical evolution of the growth of Topsy, and of every 
other child of man. Even the reason used by the best experts 
in this line is accounted for in the same mechanical way. And 
then, too, the doctrine of evolution is itself a mechanical evolu- 
tion. 

Teleology is scorned in science, and yet without teleology 
there can be no development. What is more, these exponents 
of evolution cannot describe its processes without using teleo- 
logical terminology. Of this Darwin himself is a conspicuous 
example. And Kant, in his Third Critique, finds that it is nec- 
essary, in organic matter, to use teleology, but only as a heuris- 
tic principle; serviceable as an inventive analogy, but not of 
constituent validity. The only design is the hypothesis in the 
mind of the investigator, which itself was undesigned. 



i8o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Ever since final causes were damned by Bacon with the 
phrase, "barren vestals," they have remained eliminated from 
the methods of science. In fact, whenever we find teleological 
terminology used in science, we are warned that, though really 
inconsistent and unmeaning, it is a useful and necessary mode 
of expression — not to be taken seriously. A chance throw of 
the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, after millions upon mil- 
lions of throws, produced the Iliad, and the theory of evolution. 
Is this a merely frivolous and popular statement of an objection 
to the mechanical theory, or is it not absolutely a proposf 
Surely *'the air of finality" which the exponents of the me- 
chanical theory assume in their theory needs airing, for it is 
not a barren vestal, but the mother of absolute nihilism as re- 
gards all of humanity's cherished ideals. 

Let the cold facts of the rigidly scientific doctrine of evolu- 
tion be boldly and baldly stated, purged of all anthropomorphic 
conceptions of design, of all ethical and theological embellish- 
ments ; let it stand out as a theory which has "escorted the Cre- 
ator to the extreme frontier of the universe, with many expres- 
sions of consideration, and returned without Him;" let it be 
known in its estimate of man's here and hereafter and as un- 
worthing all the spiritual values of humanity ; let it not be popu- 
larized with meretricious ornament, but let its revolutionary ef- 
fect upon all that moral and religious men hold dear — ^then, I 
cannot see why there should be such suicidal haste to avow 
one's self to be an evolutionist, on the part of those who believe 
in God, freedom and immortality. A bullet in the brain, the 
first tooth pain or first heart strain would seem to be the most 
natural consequence of holding the mechanical doctrine of evo- 
lution as the whole truth of concrete experience. 

But this is pragmatic. As we are not following our hearts 
chiefly, we return to the logic of the theory. 

We return again to our assertion that with mere mechanism 
there can be progress towards a goal, and without a progress 
towards a goal there can be no development, and, moreover, 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD i8i 

that without this ideal goal being an efficient factor, there can 
be no change from a lower to a higher. One might well go 
back to Hegel, or if the name repels, back to Aristotle where 
Hegel went, for a concrete view of development as a world- 
process and of all processes within the world of time and space 
that make them to be more than mere mechanical changes. I do 
not know of a more valuable piece of work to be done to-day than 
that of a clear, re-statement of Aristotle's theory of development 
under the rubrics of the four causes, and of potentiality, actu- 
ality, matter, form, entelechy — of the world of thought and ex- 
istence in the process up from formless matter towards matter- 
less form. His theory preserves mechanism as subordinate to 
teleology, and gives full place for the abstract work of science 
within the concrete work of philosophy. "Back to Aristotle" 
to-day would mean, for many, forward from a dead mechanism 
to a living organic process of the evolution of concrete ration- 
ality in time and space experience. 

In mechanics we have only change. To read development 
into changes, we must read them teleologically, in the light of 
final causes. It is only changes which are relative to an end 
or result that are developing changes. All mechanism itself 
involves purpose. As Taylor says: "A true machine, so far 
from being purposeless, is a typical embodiment of purpose.'' 
''Not only are all machines, in the end, the product of designing 
intelligence, but all machines are dependent upon external pur- 
posive intelligence for control There is always somewhere 

a man to work it."^ The mechanical is always subordinate to 
purpose. We form mechanical habits of conduct and make all 
sorts of labor-saving machines that we may have freedom for 
larger spontaneous activities. 

Logically, this mechanical conception of the universe leads to 
the conception of a Deus ex machina, an extern Deity, otiose 
but dignified; the maker of so perfectly an automatic machine 
that it needs no superintendence. At best it leads to a physical 

*A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, pp. 236, 237. 



i82 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

pantheism. God is all nature, and all nature is all that God is. 
All parts of nature are but parts of one stupendous God. 

A machine-making God or, a God who is a machine, is the 
logical goal of mechanical conceptions. 

Of course nothing moral or religious is here possible. The 
word machine grates upon the ear, even in its use in describing 
human beings. It gives us a cold shudder to have Wordsworth 
use it in his otherwise perfect little poem to his wife : 

"And now I see with eyes serene 
The very pulse of the machine," 

Aimless changes can never be signijficant of development. 
Again in all changes there must be a continuity of identity. 
The new thing, the new self must have a core of identity with 
the old. Topsy now is the same as Topsy then, or else Topsy 
never ''grow'd.'' That is, all changes are those of something 
changing. In mechanics there is always a ''given" element 
taken for granted — an atom, a germ, an heredity, an environ- 
ment. In biology there are "gemmules," ''inherent growth 
forces." ''Persistence of type" is as fundamental an element 
as variations. The latter are mechanically accounted for by 
changing environment. 

But the given type or heredity — the identical element must 
surely itself be accounted for. The mechanical theory ac- 
counts for it by previous environments. But environments of 
what ? It is still environments of a given something, a definite 
something that is changed — atom, germ, heredity, the primor- 
dial atom, protoplasm, pro to — something definite. Still the 
proto is a "given' or the regress must be ad infinitum. The 
same is also true of the environment. Back in the abyssmal 
darkness of chaos, the scientific imagination sees something 
definite, something already formed — ^but still evolution must 
have formed it. Here too we find the superiority of Aristotle's 
theory of development. He posits two things, as relatively 
and abstractly distinct — formless matter, or non-being, and 
matterless form or absolute being. Every relative form of be- 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 183 

ing is a phase of the superimposition of form upon the formless 
— the non-existent. We shall shortly return to this in our ex- 
amination of the category of potentiality. 

Abiding by a ''given'' we must then posit it as moving or 
being moved. But this lands us at once in Zeno's unanswerable 
paradoxes — unanswerable I mean on the empiricist's theory, 
except by positing another ''given" that moves. Motion implies 
(a) two places and (&) that the identical thing must be in two 
places at the same time. Motion implies succession both in 
time and space. But that which is successive cannot be in the 
same time, and that which is in two places at the same time can- 
not be the same thing. Thus motion is inconceivable. 

But again, in all development, something identical must be- 
come something different. In all forms of development the 
given identical thing is perpetually transcending itself. The 
given X must change, or be changed by another "given.'^ 
Though it must preserve a certain modicum of identity, there 
must be difference within it when it is changed into xy. The 
babe Topsy transcends itself, becomes different and yet remains 
the same in the woman Topsy. But it is scientific nonsense to 
say that anything ever transcends itself. No such miracles are 
allowable. The thing is changed by environment into something 
else which in turn changes or is changed ad infinitum. The 
quantity of matter or force, however, always remains identical. 
But then it is qualitative, determinate changes that face us in 
development. It is only in qualitative quantity that we can speak 
of development. And no amount of mere quantitative changes 
can give us quality, though Spencer assures us that "by small in- 
crements of modifications, any amount of modification may, in 
time, be generated." Great, verily, is the power of imperceptible 
changes ! Thus x becomes xy, xyz, xyz etc., and yet it must 
remain x or there is no nexus of continuity. If the changes are 
only those of the addition of external environments, we have no 
organic process but merely the sum of x-{-y-\-z, only quantitative 
changes. X can never transcend its old self to become a new 



i84 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

one. It either remains unchanged by the quantitative addition, 
and then there is no development, or it becomes a different thing, 
and then there is no continuity. In the quantitative realm, x 
can never transcend itself in a process of self-development. 
Imperceptible external additions are only a scientific mythology. 
The lower can never change into the higher. "It takes a man 
to beget a man." It takes a living babe to become a full grown 
man. It takes form to supervene upon the formless, to make 
qualitative changes in any quantitative given, in order to a devel- 
opment of it. Development involves not only a present laden 
with the past, but also a present laden with the future, which is 
not yet. It involves an ideal end as well as the actual begin- 
ning. But empirical mechanism discards the ideal as a dream 
of the imagination. Thus it fails to see that, though in the order 
of time a lower form precedes the higher form, yet, from the 
analysis of its constitutive nature, the form, the ideal, the end 
must enter as a factor of its development. That is, in the order 
of real existence, the perfect precedes the imperfect, the 
whole the part as efficient factors in any process of development. 
Thus the merely chronological sequences of quantitative changes 
are impotent to explain development. In any beginning there 
must not only be a chaos of an ''indefinite, incoherent homo- 
geneity," but also the Logos, thought, mind, purpose, in order 
to the evolution of cosmos — or to the evolution of man through 
the historical lower forms of life. It takes then, let us say 
boldly, in theological language, a God to beget a man. 

With abstract identity and abstract difference there is no 
process of development. Mechanism can at best say here we 
have X and here y and here we have xy. It is only as they 
are both seen to spring from a ground that we can find any con- 
sequence worth calling an existence. The ground is the con- 
crete unity of identity and difference. The ground, or Leib- 
nitz's category of sufficient reason, is a relative explanation of 
the process from lower to higher. Its consequences are a self- 
evolution. Heredity and variations, identity and difference are 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 185 

held apart as separate external things by the mechanical view, 
and so no ground can be given for development. Empirically 
one finds this and then that, but the living link that makes a this 
that or a somewhat is lacking. At best there is an internecine 
struggle for existence, and that which happens to survive is 
called the fittest — that is, the strongest. But the living link of 
continuity or development is lost, because these elements are not 
conceived of as elements of an organic process towards an end. 
And all that the empirical analysis can give is these elements as 
separate, external to each other. Hence its attempt to explain 
organisms by mechanism is always the logically awkward one of 
putting the cart before the horse. Thus the mechanical analy- 
sis of all forms of organism give at best dijecta membra. No 
self-analysis or self-synthesis is allowed and hence no self-de- 
velopment. That is, we have only juxtaposition and addition, 
no vital synthesis. Life and growth and mental phenomena are 
not sensuous facts, and hence no stretching of mechanical cate- 
gories can ever embrace them. 

Mechanical evolution now discards the vitalistic and the 
germinal theories. This latter form of evolution implied a 
previous involution — emanation a previous immanation. Noth- 
ing can be evolved which is not first involved. The botanist 
then worked with the germ theory. He believed that if he had 
strong enough microscopes he could see trunk, limb, leaves and 
fruit inlaid in the microcosmic germ. That is now a discarded 
superstition for biologists. For the supposed involute was 
only another hypothetical but imperceptible physical element. 

However, we often find them slipping into the same organic 
view under cover of the term potential. The oak is potentially 
in the acorn, plus a juxtaposed environment. Thus Tyndall 
saw in matter "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."^ 

^ "By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experi- 
mental evidence, and discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance 
of its latent powers and notwithstanding our professed reverence for 



i86 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Taken seriously, we should have, in this famous confession 
of faith, a latent Deus ex machina. Nature as an automaton 
means self-activity, self-development. But then we are out of 
and above the realm of passive mechanical changes and far into 
the realm that philosophy calls reality. ''The potency of all ter- 
restrial life" can never be found in any mechanical changes in 
the matter of metaphysical scientists. Faith must invoke a lat- 
ent deity, when a revealed God is denied. Those who hold the 
mechanical view of reality, use the term potential in either a 
mythological or realistic form. In its realistic form it is em- 
pirical potency. A glass of wine in the stomach of a poet is 
potential of a poem. It is a mere question of a mechanical 
transformation of energy. 

If we are too advanced to think of going back to Aristotle 
to learn the function of the potential in any form of develop- 
ment, let us go to the Century Dictionary. Potence means 
pozver, efficacy, capacity of producing certain results. The 
potential is always properly found as an organic correlative of 
actuality. It may, abstractly, stand for a future actual. What 
is potentially, is virtually the actual. It is a mere question of 
time. In physics we have potential energy, a mere positional 
form, but also a force function, the latent suppressed amount 
of work-capacity of any system.^ In no proper use of the 
term does it ever signify the merely possible. 

A mere possibility is as good as nothing. A potential is 
virtually as good as an actual. A potential thing is indeed 
itself always some form of the actual. It has a past history 
and a formed character. But it is called potential only in 
reference to some other assured future form of actuality. It 
has a goal, an end, a result — ^future, but as good as actual. 
Thus teleology slips in, or rather is seen to be an essential 
element of potentiality. The potential has a here and now 

its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and 
potency of all terrestrial life." — Belfast Address, 1874, p. 75. 
^ Cf. Mach's Science of Mechanics, p. 449. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 187 

actuality, because it has had a past process. It is to have 
a there and then form, because it is to have a future history. 
The acorn is an actuaHty, but with reference to an actual oak 
tree, it is potential. According to the mechanical view, the 
nerve of its future process is the same as that of its past process 
— one of external causality. For any form of a given actuality, 
as we have seen, is always to be resolved into successive aggre- 
gations of environments. But this again eviscerates the poten- 
tiality of all potency, and we can only speak of the impotency of 
the potent, unless we either frankly or surreptitiously bring 
in the factors of self-activity and final cause or end. The mass 
of matter which we call an acorn is a potential oak, only so 
far as, either immanently or transcendentally, the genus tree, is 
a factor in the process. Bricks and lumber are potential of a 
house, but only as the builder and the architect and the plan 
of a house as a future end or result, enter as factors into the 
process. The potential abstracted from its organic correlation 
with these ideal factors is as good as nothing. That is, to 
make the potential more than a mere capricious possibility, it 
must be seen to be organically related to a potent, ideal, future 
end. Abstracted from this, the potential has no ^'promise and 
potency" of anything. But here we are back to Aristotle's 
matter and form, potentiality and actuality, material and final 
causes. The final cause becomes the first and the efficient cause 
of the process. 

Moreover, to understand the finite processes of potentialities 
becoming other forms of actuality, there is implied an Absolute 
Actual, a matterless Form — a Form which has eternally realized 
all its potentialities, or which never had any potentialities. 
The goal, the end is not a future. It is timeless, yet the 
source of time and space and all movements therein — the Un- 
moved Mover — a causal actuality because a Causa Sui, This 
actual is always prior to and causal of all finite potentialities, 
and of their ever rising into higher forms of actuality — all na- 
ture being a perpetually graduated conversion of matter into 



i88 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

form of the potential into the actual. But this is shocking non- 
sense for those who hold the mechanical theory as the ultimate 
interpretation of nature. We have gone back — nay, let us say, 
the term potential has forced our thought back, to Aristotle's 
Theology. 

A primordial atom is an allowable hypothesis, but a Prime 
Mover, an Actus Ptirus, a Causa Sui, an absolute Self -con- 
sciousness — a God — well, the mechanical interpretation of the 
universe has ''no need of that hypothesis." But without such an 
hypothesis one cannot intellectually comprehend the rationality 
of the universe, or of the grades of reality in the physical world, 
or the progressive development of higher out of lower forms 
of life. Otherwise we have only a world of changes. But phi- 
losophy insists that, in order to a rational comprehension, what 
is last, that is the end or result, in any chronological process, is 
really first in the order of real being — that it is from one point 
of view, the creative form fulfilling empty potentialities, or, 
from another point of view it is the longing, the desire, the love 
for the form that is the self-fufilling potency of the imperfect. 
In the light of such a First Principle alone can the possibility of 
development in any form be understood — and in its light we 
have all nature lifted up out of the dead mechanism of external 
changes — a process of evolution through the inorganic to the 
organic and then into all forms of the organic ; through the un- 
conscious to consciousness. Here life, self-activity, self- 
realization of all possible potentialities are possible, because in 
each potential is a greater than itself. And yet this greater 
than the empirical self is its own true, higher self, urging, press- 
ing on towards a goal. Time and space are seen to be the cradle 
and the nursery and the school in which God is training His 
sons into full manhood — in the organic body of His Eternal 
Son. 

Thus philosophy speaks in identical language with religion, 
and both speak in terms that are nonsense to those whose only 
dialect for interpreting the universe is that of the mechanical 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD i8^ 

theory. Mechanism we still have, and the mechanical theory 
has still its proper sphere and work. But mechanism is ex- 
plained as subordinate to teleology, organ to function, the lower 
to the higher. The contention is not against any of the good 
work done under the concept of mechanism, but it is only 
against it when it is urged as an ontological theory to explain 
the whole of reality. The contention is that all theists should 
recognize the absolute impossibility of having God, freedom and 
immortality under such an ontological theory. 

Intellectually, as well as morally, one must find in the lowest 
form of religion a truer interpretation of the world and life, 
than that offered by the metaphysical mechanical theory — in 
such a form, for instance, as it is given by Hackel in his Riddle 
of the Universe* 

The contention is, that to understand any change as a de- 
velopment, we must use higher categories than those of mechan- 
ism. There must be an dva^Sao-es eh oAAo yei/o?. 

''The limits of evolution" have been so frequently pointed 
out and never as yet intellectually disproven, that I need only 
barely mention a few of them. Professor Howison states the 
following :^ 

I. The chasm between the phenomenal and the noumenal, 
which is asserted to be, but to be unknowable. 

II. The break in the phenomenal world between the inor- 
ganic and the organic. 

III. The further break between physiological and logical 
genesis. 

IV. The gulf between the Unknowable and the explana- 
tory. 

V. The gulf between nature and human nature viewed as 
essentially reason. 

Let not the fairy tales of science, the limitless flights of the 
imagination of some of the plebifiers of science impose them- 
selves upon us as forms of knowledge. Thankful for every ad- 

^ George H. Howison, The Limits of Evolution, Qiap. I. 



190 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

vance of mechanism in giving us useful short-hand, symboHcal 
descriptions of an abstract phase of reaHty, we are under the in- 
tellectual and moral necessity of declining it as an ontological 
theory. We have no use for a machine that puts on airs, takes 
the reins and assumes the mastery of the maker. Intellectually 
such ontological airs of mechanism are ridiculous, morally they 
are mortal foes. Intellectually, science is bankrupt when- 
ever it becomes a pseudo-metaphysic, as it so often does, because 
science as such cannot honor the drafts drawn upon her ontology 
by life, teleology, self -activity, self-consciousness, self-determin- 
ation. And let no one be deceived by any attempted subterfuges 
ofttimes offered by the lesser lights of science. 

It is an unpardonable impertinence for any scientific men 
to deride metaphysics, and then to bring in a poor metaphysics 
of their own — a reification of the merely conceptual — ^to account 
for the actual. The business of science is not to interpret the 
concrete whole of experience, but to describe the abstract phe- 
nomenal. Mechanism is the best tool for description. Plato 
said that "even God geometrizes.'^ Descartes prophesied a uni- 
versal mathematics as the regnant method. Modern physical 
science is rapidly realizing this prophecy. As exact science she 
can tolerate no dissent from her mathematical formulas, which 
are all on the level with the proposition that two and two make 
four. 

But when we pass from mathematical physics to the reified 
theories — the metaphysics of some men of science we pass the 
limits of science. Here the odium scientiUcum becomes as in- 
tolerable as the old dead and buried odium theologicum. The 
rubbish chamber of heaven or the limbo of the inferno is not 
even now wholly occupied by defunct theological forms. We 
dare believe that some current forms of scientific theory, and all 
forms of the metaphysics of scientific men — all reification of 
matter, force, ether, electrons, as the ultimately real — will find 
their future abode therein. 

Science is not bankrupt. Science can never be bankrupt, so 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 191 

long as she abstains from metaphysics and sticks to her voca- 
tion of bringing all sensuous phenomena, under mechanical 
laws, as short-hand formulas of description of an abstract, 
external world — abstracted, I mean, from consciousness. For 
the concrete world is a knozvn world. Even the external world 
can never be known to exist apart from the knower, the ''plus 
me" element in all experience. It is pseudo-science that asserts 
the external world to exist independently of consciousness, in 
the same form as it appears for consciousness. It is thus doing 
what true science abhors. It is making an assertion, which 
from the nature of the case, it can never possibly prove. Our 
world is always a known world, always the object of a subject. 
It can never be known apart, because it never exists apart, from 
a knower. 

Though all physics imply and demand a metaphysis, it is not 
within the scope of science to furnish it. For she deals only 
with a phenomenal, external world, abstracted from the knower. 
This is the view of such leaders in science as Mach, Ostwald, 
Kirchhoff, Helmholtz and Kelvin. They banish metaphysics 
from their science, and avowedly decline to reify their working 
conceptions of atoms, mass, force, ether, electrons and laws of 
nature. Rigid science has nothing to do with final causes, with 
freedom or with God. Such hypotheses would interfere with 
her legitimate task. Indeed, science as such has no business 
whatever with the higher and more concrete forms of reality. 
That is the business of philosophy and theology and the human- 
ities. 

Here two and two make five. Tolstoi said that every 
prayer is a petition that two and two may make more than four. 
Sir Oliver Lodge says that "the whole controversy hinges, in 
one sense, on the efficacy of prayer," and then goes on to criti- 
cise Huxley's contention against the efficacy of prayer. More 
things are 

"wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of." 



192 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

''Even in medicine it is not absurd to suggest that drugs and no 
prayer may be almost as foolish as prayer and no drugs."^ 

In fact, are we not intellectually compelled to say that the 
only way in which there can be progress instead of mere quanti- 
tative changes ; the only way in which there can be any devel- 
opment of the higher out of the lower is by two and two becom- 
ing more than four ? Here then must be the energizing of an 
immanent or a transcendent power and intelligence that is more 
than mass and motion. Mind and matter are always more than 
two. God and one man are always a majority. And the ex- 
ternal world is never without mind or God, and so evolution is 
possible. 

"A fire mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly fish and a Saurian, 

And caves where cave men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, — 
Some call it evolution, 
x\nd others call it God.'' 

A man is more than the quantitative equivalent of proto- 
plasm or monkey plu*s an infinite quantity of external environ- 
ments. Mind is qualitatively different from matter. There is 
a difference in kind between a stone and a plant. Mechanical 
changes can only give difference of quantitative aggregations. 
"A face turned from the clod" can be no evolution from the clod. 
It is different in kind. 

Strict science logically precludes the explanation of any non- 
sensuous forms or elements of concrete experience. It does its 
proper work when it refrains from expressing any doctrines on 
these subjects. It is out of its bounds when it attempts to show 
that its principles and results lead to any form of Theism or 
morality. It transgresses its limits much more when it assumes 
the role of metaphysics, as it does when it takes its phenomena 
and their laws of succession and coexistence as real realities 

^ Cf. Ideals of Science and Faith, Chap. I. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 193 

and their constitutive relations. When it does this, when it 
reifies its abstractions of atoms, matter, force, cause, it gives us 
a metaphysics which absolutely precludes all forms of freedom 
and spirituality. But in doing this it is no longer science, but 
the poor metaphysics of a pseudo-science. 

We demur, then, to physical science having the last word to 
say in man's interpretation of experience. We do so because 
(a) its categories are applied to an abstract phase of experience 
for the practical purpose of dealing successfully with this por- 
tion, (b) because of the limitations and self-contradictions of 
the categories of thought used by mechanical science, when 
otherwise applied. The mechanical theory gives a measured 
mechanical description of external phenomena in terms of mass 
and motion, which by no means exhaust all phases of even this 
abstract world. 

Again we demur to the attempt to make the interpretation 
of concrete experience given by physical science to be knowl- 
edge, in the strict sense of the term, while other interpretations 
are placed outside of the realm of knowledge. It is a technical 
and historical blunder to identify the term science with merely 
physical science. At least, it is to be said, that all interpreta- 
tions of experience — scientific, ethical and religious — are on a 
par as to validity, though not on a par as to relative concrete- 
ness of interpretation. 

And now, after this wearisome and semi-technical examina- 
tion of the meaning and use and limitations of the categories 
with which mechanistic science works, in contrast with the 
higher and more concrete categories of philosophy, we return 
to a consideration of the limitations of the historical method, in 
itG scientific form. The ardent exponents of this method now 
claim that it dominates in the study of all things — not only in 
history proper, but in everything that has a past with successive 
stages. And everything in time has such a part. The theory of 
evolution claims to be a history of all things up to date. It is 
thus a form of the historical method. But the proper field of 

13 



194 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

this method is that of human history and the social institutions 
of man. This method does its proper work in making a minute 
and exhaustive inventory of the antecedent, concomitant and 
subsequent stages in the temporal process of any institution. It 
furnishes the data for their rational explanation. The work 
done by the exponents of this method has been enormous^ mar- 
velously painstaking and accurate and in every way admirable. 
They have attempted to reproduce the events of a past phase 
of human activity — to give an exact narrative of the complex 
facts of the time — to make the past veritably a present to us. 
They have ransacked libraries of books and all sorts of docu- 
mentary and archaeological evidence. When doing its proper 
work this method avoids all ideological, didactic and ethical pre- 
conceptions. It seeks only for facts, rather than an interpreta- 
tion, though it often has forgotten that facts themselves are but 
fossilized interpretations. It seeks the historical origin of in- 
stitutions, the chronological stages of their formation. It holds 
that none of them — laws, constitutions, religions — ever come 
full-made to man. They all have a history. What then are 
the facts of their history? 

Pages of rhetoric would not suffice to tell of the vast and dis- 
interested labor done by its exponents, or of the immense in- 
crease of knowledge of the past of present institutions in the 
myriad forms of anthropology. No other body of workers in 
science has done more or done it better than the students of 
history. 

It is only when this method is also used as the ultimate 
method of the explanation of a present by its past, making its 
natural history to be its full and true history, that we find its 
limitations. When used as an explanatory method we find that 
it generally uses the categories of physical science. That is, 
it uses the category of empirical causality and banishes that 
of teleology. Too often, too, it uses causality, not in the posi- 
tivistic sense of sequence and coexistence, to which it has been 
reduced in science, but in its earlier animistic sense of force or 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 195 

external compulsion. Logically, all it can say is, now we have 
A, with a, b, c — ^ as environment, and then we have B, But, 
too often, it regards B as caused by A-\-a, b, c — ^. Thus it 
seeks to explain the status quo of any institution in the light of 
its past changes, making them the efficient causes of its present 
form. But, as we have seen, efficient causality must either be 
eviscerated of all efficiency or else be made to include a first and 
final cause. 

This method rightly asks for the that {on), but wrongfly 
proceeds to make the that (on) equivalent to the why (Siort) 
though here, strangely enough, it is following the etymolog- 
cal derivation of on — 8ta tovto o n. But, logically, the why 
is a different category from the how. The why is the reason, 
the cause the to ov €vc/ca, which is always the end, or final 
cause. It forgets its Aristotle — that the true nature of any- 
thing is not to be found in its potential or immature material 
form, but in its fully realized form or its ivTeXix^ia. Thus the 
true nature of the acorn is only to be seen in its realized form 
of an oak — that of the new-born babe in its form of manhood. 

Thus the historical method comes to look too exclusively 
backward rather than forward and upward, in its explanation 
of any development. At best it gets to the category of reci- 
procity — of thing and environment, both of which are only 
accidentally and externally related to each other. Mere jux- 
taposition becomes the efficient cause. It fails to remember 
that its analysis of the given thing is always resolvable into 
previous juxtapositions. It fails, too, to see that it always pre- 
supposes some form of self-activity — ^that at least thing and 
environment are organically connected in the process. But 
again, while illogically using the semi-organic form of reci- 
procity, it fails to see that organic development implies besides, 
self-activity and a future as well as a past. For any organism, 
as an organism, is not in space at all. 

In an organism, each part, or rather, each function, is both 
means and end. It is a system or unity made up, not of me- 



196 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

chanical, but of cooperative functions. Each lives for the 
others and the v^hole. The v^hole Hves in and for each part. 

The Hving plant or animal — its organic life growth is an 
invisible, intangible something that can in no v^ay be seen, or 
seen to be the result of any external thing. Food in the stom- 
ach is transmuted, not by mechanical or chemical processes, 
though both of these go on in the stomach. 

Given the cells, still an organism is not merely a mechanical 
aggregation of cells, and yet no mechanical science can find the 
causal linkage uniting them into one system. In the lowest 
form of vital organism there is a cooperation of organs that is 
quasi-purposive, that unites them into one in a way absolutely 
different from the way in which parts of a machine are united. 
In the machine, the purposive cooperation of the parts is en- 
tirely external — that is, in the mind of the maker of it. In an 
organism the matter changes, but the life preserves its identity. 
In a machine this is not so. Part after part may be replaced 
till the whole identity is gone. An old stocking may be darned 
and darned till not a fibre of the old stocking remains, but 
then it is another stocking. In a body, every material par- 
ticle may be other than it was a few years before and yet the 
life keep its identity. 

An organism is never simply the sum of its external parts. 
Its parts are never merely external parts. They are members of 
an organic system, which realizes itself in its members. As 
Aristotle put it, a hand dissevered from a living body is no 
longer a hand. The life of the body of man, or of any of his 
institutions, is not a sensuous form of existence. It is always 
more than the mechanical aggregate of its sensuous conditions 
— past and present. There is something in all organisms and 
their self-active development that no sense nor sense-extending 
scopes can ever see — something that no mere past of external 
factors can ever explain. ^'There is a mystery," not only "in 
the soul of state,'' but in the life of every human institution, 
that is beyond the ken of the keenest scopes of physical science. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 197 

An organism is always an organism of organs, functions that 
have no sensuous existence. A development is always an 
organic process of realizing at one stage, what was not pres- 
ent at a relatively initial stage. It is always an ideal continuity 
of a being forever devouring its own present, in creating its 
own future. Science is hopelessly bankrupt, when she passed 
out her mechanical paper money to honor the checks drawn 
upon her for life, organisms, development and self-realization 
in any form. We insist that no mere past can account for the 
present of any organism; that for the efficient pulse of any 
development we must look to the ideal end — the future that 
has as yet no sensuous existence — gradually realizing itself 
through the means of external circumstances; that in any de- 
veloping form there is immanent a greater than it — an unactu- 
alized ideal that is the potency of its future form. 

The neglect of this ideal and, empirially, future element, 
hopelessly invalidates any mechanical explanation of historical 
development. This enforcement of the forceless category of 
causality to the neglect of that of teleology vitiates too often 
much of the work of the historical method when used as a 
method of explanation. Fortunately, logical consistency is 
often neglected, and we have theories of society and social insti- 
tutions, professedly based on mechanical view, so well embel- 
lished wath teleological and ethical terminology as to conceal 
their real principle, sometimes even from the writers themselves. 
But never can any form of mechanical explanation give other 
than a stone for bread. When offered to theists a homely 
proverb is a sufficient criticism : ''A china egg may fool even 
a hen, but it won't make a good omelet." 



11. The Philosophical Form of the Historical Method. 

Our criticism of the empirical or scientific school of the his- 
torical method has already developed its philosophical form. 



198 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Here too, as we have already seen, the conception of develop- 
ment is a regnant principle. The physical development has 
seen to be logically possible, only on condition of the meta- 
physical principle of Mind and the category of Final Cause. 

Everything that grows or develops is as full of the future 
as it is laden with the past. For anything to transcend its pres- 
ent sensuous form, there must be a factor that is spatially and 
temporally unreal, immanent within it, whether unconsciously 
as in the unorganic, or sub-consciously as in the plant, or con- 
sciously as in man. It is to this, the ideal, the future, the end 
that has no actuality, as an environment, that we must look to 
for the use and control of mechanical processes, making them 
into agents and ministers of organic processes. Every develop- 
ing process, could it be conscious and utter its experience, would 
say, ''in me lives a greater than me." The acorn has the generic 
ideal within it — not sensuously and yet really — and its growth is 
relatively a self-realization of its genus. At best it is a co- 
worker with this potent non-physical generic factor in the proc- 
ess of its development. So when any method explains the pres- 
ent form of a human institution by the aggregate of its past an- 
tecedents and environments we demur — non demonstrandum 
est. Consciousness, though chronologically later in its appear- 
ance on earth than the unconscious, cannot have been merely a 
product of the unconscious. In fact all the categories used for 
the interpretation of experience are found only in that of self- 
consciousness. They are its grips, or hands, or keys to bring 
order out of chaos. To put it in a well worn phrase, the source 
of the categories can never be made subject to its own cate- 
gories. It is always transcendental, standing apart from, while 
efficiently immanent w^ithin, the historically processes, and, 
later, interpretative of these processes. 

Whence this ideal element in plant, animal and man? 
Whence, in particular, the animating compulsory ideals that we 
find in any analysis of human institutions? Only through an 
ideal of a better condition has there been a progress out of a 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 199 

lower one. Only through the ideal of the Best have there been 
ideals of a better. Not backwards through aggregations of 
lower forms; nor backward to the primordial atom, must the 
eye be cast in explaining the history of man's achievement since 
his strugggle out of lower forms of life. No mere past, no mere 
chronological succession of past empirical states can account for 
these ideals of a better and a Best, except so far as those states 
are seen to implicate the empirically self-transcending element. 
Put the philosophical answer in theological form, and we say 
they are only accountable for by the conception of God in his- 
tory — present, not wholly immanently — else nature would be 
God — nor wholly transcendentally or externally else nature 
would have no self-activity or worth. As Aristotle would say, 
the world has its vital principle or ultimate and concomitant or- 
igin in God, and this principle exists not merely as a form imma- 
nent in the world, like the order in an army, but also as an abso- 
lute self-existent substance, like the general of an army. Thus 
the ultimate presupposition of intelligent will must always be 
the plus element of any lower stage, in order to an advance to 
a higher stage. For the development of consciousness out of 
the unconscious, of the moral out of the non-moral, of the high- 
est forms of ethical institutions out of the brute struggle for ex- 
istence — in every form of development there is an intellectual 
*'need of this hypothesis." The prius of all activity as well as 
of all thought is that of perfect Self-consciousness, self-activity, 
the Actus Punts of the scholastics, the Prime Mover or Self- 
consciousness of Aristotle, the Good of Plato, the God of Chris- 
tians — all of which is arrant nonsense to mechanical meta- 
physics. This timeless prior is the intellectually necessary pre- 
supposition in all development; necessary not only to its 
changes, but also necessary as a standard by which alone we 
can say that any change is either intellectually or morally a 
progress rather than a lapse. And yet this is just the 
hypothesis of which mechanical science and the science of his- 
tory *'have no need." Take away the semi-popular but mere- 



200 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

tricious embellishments of many natural histories of man's 
ethical, political and religious institutions and you will find, as 
their principle, that of a mechanism in which the hypothesis of 
God, freedom and immortality are absolutely ruled out. There 
should be no mistake about this. What is needed is strenuous 
criticism of their fundamental principle as an insufficient First 
Principle. 

If in the beginning there was only a mass of heterogenous 
homogenousness, there must have been either an immanent or 
a transcendent element of self-activity, towards self-realization 
in the form that modern civilization now bears. The leaden, 
slimy past, without this ideal future of any human institution 
is just as much ^'a past that never was a present," as any myth- 
ical ''golden age." This plus element must be added to any for- 
est of monkeys to get the Edenic garden of the present. The 
Christian institution of marriage, though historically traceable 
to lowly forms of animal promiscuity, can be seen to be an evo- 
lution from these lowly forms, only in the light of this plus ele- 
ment. Conscience and morality, though traceable to lower 
forms of conduct, and this conduct to mechanical forms of mo- 
tion, (Spencer) need this plus element as constitutive of the up- 
ward movement. We cannot do, as Spencer insists that we must, 
"interpret the more developed by the less developed." No mere 
"aggregations of simple excitations or compounding of simple 
presentative feelings" can account for "the relations between 
feelings," or for the rise of intelligence and purpose.^ We may 
grant all the chronological steps which Spencer traces in the 
evolution of moral conduct, and yet, without this plus element, 
we have only a series of changes. In a real sense then, the per- 
fect does precede the imperfect. Though, chronologically, its 
empirical form is always a future, it is actually present as form- 
ative and generic in the process. Thus no merely mechanical 
chronological series, "simple" or "compound" or "re-com- 
pounded" can account for the existence of any form of morality 
'Cf. Spencer's Data of Ethics, Chaps, V, VI, VII., 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 201 

or of the moralizing institutions of family, state and church. 
"They reckon ill who leave me out." 

It is in this plus element that we find not merely the only 
sufficient spring of development, but also the real ontological 
element that accounts for the chronological evolution of the 
higher out of the lower. The Final Cause is the light in which 
we can understand those human ideals that have ever urged 
man upward. Only in its light can we make the judgment 
on any transformation, that it is an improvement — a progress, 
a development. In the blind, unconscious struggle of pre- 
human nature; in the struggles for existence and for better 
forms of existence there is always this attractive Final Cause 
operative, and its efficiency in any change is the measure of its 
reality.^ 

Respice flnem has been the immanent potency in plant, ani- 
mal and man, in all their upward movements. Teleology is 
regnant at least in the sphere of the truly human. The ideal 
method of science is anti-teleological. And the historical 
method inclines to the same mechanical view in its interpreting 
the present by its past external history. It is only a source of 
intellectual confusion for the idealistic view to coquet with 
the empirical view. If it is nonsense to explain a mountain 
in terms of morals, it is no less nonsense to explain morals and 
the moral institutions of man in terms used to explain the 
mountain. All the past external elements of an institution 
do not explain it. It is always more than the sum of external 
parts, as is every organism. To say that there was at a rela- 
tively first time, or time of origins, or, to use Spencer's formula, 
''an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, passing to a definite 
coherent heterogeneity" may possibly be an abstract descrip- 
tive formula of chronological stages of sensuous existence. 
It is only to say first we have x, then x^, x^ — x'^. It is no 

^This Is Aristotle's conception of the unmoved Mover which moves, 
which acts upon the world as the primary object of desire: Ktvct ws 

€pQ)/Ae|/OV. 



202 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

explanation, causal or teleological. Besides the adjectives used 
in the formula qualify the nouns out of all substantial meaning. 
An indefinite, incoherent homogeneity is an unthinkable homo- 
geneity. Spencer's formula is abracadabra, unless we in- 
terpret the adjectives as the thought element and the nouns as 
the matter element. And then, the religious interpretation of 
the world-process given in the first chapter of Genesis and the 
first chapter of St. John's Gospel, interpret the process much 
more intelligibly. 

It is the boast of the historical school that this method has 
forever exploded the credibility of a golden age in the past; 
of innate moral or intellectual ideas in the mind; of natural 
rights in the state ; of a supernatural revelation in religion — in 
a word, of a higher form preceding a lower form. It has 
refuted the lapse theory in general. 

We admit this. We accept the chronological sequences that 
a patient minute historical investigation finds in any field of 
inquiry. We admit that the golden age is historically a fiction ; 
that the Garden of Eden was probably a forest of monkeys, and 
that long prior to that, chronologically, there was protoplasm, 
then proto-sXmie and then proto-nothmg, but an indefinite, in- 
coherent infinity of homogeneousness. No theist need hesitate 
to accept clearly proven chronological data, or the evolutionary 
theory as a short-hand descriptive formula of the chrono- 
logical sequences of an abstract portion of reality as mere sense 
data are. But to accept this as an ontological explanation is 
beyond the capacity of any intellect that knows that two and 
two never make five, even though the chronological antecedents 
carry us back to times before man had any conception of ab- 
stract numbers, and before the evolution theory was evolved. 

As the mechanical chronological past series of changes can- 
not account for any development, neither can it afford any stand- 
ard by which we can measure any change so as to make the 
judgment that it is an evolution, a development, a progress. 
And when we come to measure the progress and the worth of 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 203 

any existing institution, we necessarily imply a standard, or end, 
or ideal. 

But it is one of the natural and almost inevitable vices of 
any empirical method, that in seeking to explain the higher by 
the lower, it lowers the real worth of the higher form. Profes- 
sor Dicey puts it very mildly when he says : ''The possible 
weakness of the historical method as applied to the growth of 
institutions is, that it may induce men to think so much of the 
way in which an institution has come to be what it is, that they 
cease to consider with sufficient care what it is that an institu- 
tion has become/'^ Mankind comes to be humiliated in view 
of its very humble origin. 

These exploiters of the lowly empirical origin of man and 
his institutions might quote these words of the prophet Isaiah : 
''Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn and the hole of the 
pit whence ye were dug." (Isaiah LI, i.). But in quoting, 
they would pervert his meaning. The prophet is exhorting the 
righteous to look back to their noble ancestors, as an inspiration. 
They ought to be some persons of account, because of their lin- 
eage from persons of account. But when the pit whence man 
was digged is that of lowly, brutish form ; and when the mind 
is assiduously studying those forms, the estimate of what man 
and his institutions are take on a different estimate. There is 
indeed a just prejudice felt by man when told to look to such a 
pit for inspiration — against the derivation of man from beast, 
Christianity from Judaism and Judaism from lower forms and 
finally all religion from that of the fear of ghosts (Spencer) ; of 
psychology from physiology and that from physics and that 
from matter, motion and space as the ultimate elements of the 
real. "Go to the ant thou sluggard ; consider her ways and be 
wise" (Proverbs VI, 6) are words of practical wisdom. But go 
to the ape thou man, consider his ways, to understand what thou 
art, is neither intellectual nor practical wisdom. Much wiser 
would it be to say to the ape, go to the man thou beast ; consider 
^ Dicey, The Law of the Constitution, pref. to ist ed. 



204 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

his ways and be wise as to thy future goal. The actual ape, as 
potential man, might thus learn something that would aid his 
progress into actual manhood. This conscious ideal in the apes 
would hasten the process, going on through the persuasion of 
the unconscious ideal, of this rising ^'on stepping-stones of their 
dead selves to higher things." If not, then how can the man 
learn anything about his own essential form from the study of 
the ape. As a matter of fact, anthropologists always interpret 
the lower in the light of the higher ; the ape in the light of their 
knowledge of man. Their observation of the ape's character- 
istics are interpretations from the human standpoint. Often they 
anthropomorphize too much in attributing special cleverness to 
animals, and, anon, they de-anthropomorphize or animalize too 
much in their study of man. 

As a matter of fact, however, they do — and cannot do other- 
wise than — reverse Spencer's rule to ^'interpret the more devel- 
oped by the less developed." The student of the ape, not being 
an ape, knows more about the ape than the ape himself, simply 
because he knows more of the developed form of the ape, as 
found in man. He looks at the ape's potentialities in the light of 
their actualization in man. With a clear apprehension of the 
functions in the higher form, he can see the imperfection in other 
forms, which make them lower. He understands a part by his 
understanding the whole— an elementary or lower stage by his 
knowledge of the developed stage. And the same is true of the 
historical method as applied to the various chronologically suc- 
cessive stages of any human institution, intellectual or practical. 
Jurisprudence to-day is comparative jurisprudene — an interpre- 
tation of diverse past and lower forms in the light of its most 
developed form. Politics is comparative politics — an interpreta- 
tion of many past forms in the light of its modern form. Phi- 
lology is comparative philology. The science of all arts and 
institutions is comparative, and the more developed serves to 
explain how other forms are less developed. And then alas ! for 
Spencer's formula, even the more developed is explained in com- 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 205 

parison with an ideal that, as yet, has no actual time and space 
existence. The goal may fly and forever fly, but some relative 
idea of the goal is always a chief factor in the explanation of 
how some form is relatively more elementary and undeveloped 
than another. Some ideal of the normal is present in all study 
of the abnormal. Some actual straight line or perfect circle, or 
absolutely frictionless mass, or perfect vacuum — or, since these 
are confessedly never actual — some ideal of them is present in 
the mind of the student who studies their actual forms. No bet- 
ter illustration of how we can understand the imperfect in the 
light of an ideal perfect can be given than the method that Spen- 
cer follows in his chapter on ''Absolute and Relative Ethics."^ 
Here he does not follow his formula of explaining the higher 
by the lower. He formulates the ideal of a straight man in a 
straight community; the ideal of a completely evolved man in 
a completely evolved society, ''to serve as a standard for our 
guidance in solving, as well as we can, the problems of real con- 
duct." 

It is too often more than the implied judgment, that if man 
was derived from such lowly forms, then his own form is not so 
very high. The study of the lowly earlier forms of his best in- 
stitutions, has at least a depressing effect upon the estimation of 
their present validity and worth. Professor Sidgwick in speak- 
ing of the sceptical effect of tracing the historical growth of be- 
liefs is inclined to deny that it has any logical justification. He 
attributes it to the psychological effect of the concentration of 
the mind upon the vast and bewildering stages of their devel- 
opment and maintains, e. g,, that so far as ethics is concerned, 
the ascertainment of the origin and development of moral ideas 
cannot, logically, have any such general effect in destroying our 
confidence in our present moral ideals.^ 

But this effect is logical, in any merely empirical, historical 
view. Monkey and protoplasm are not more lowly forms than 

^Data of Ethics, Chap. XV. 

^Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations, pp. 163-164. 



206 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

''the dust of the ground''' out of which it is said that the Lord 
God formed man." (Gen. II, 7). But, there, it is added that 
the Lord ''breathed into his nostrils the breath of Hfe and man 
became a Hving soul." We may accept, as most of us do, the 
evolutionary account of the origin of man out of lower forms of 
life, but always with the plus element of an immanent or tran- 
scendent Perfect. If in the dust, or protoplasm or gibbering 
monkey, there was a greater than the empirical dust, protoplasm 
or monkey, then the genesis of man out of and above them, be- 
comes intelligible and validates the worth of the evolved man. 
Otherwise such an evolution does logically invalidate our esti- 
mation of man and his place in nature. Moreover such merely 
empirical origin of man's beliefs and institutions ; of his cate- 
gories of thought and of his doctrine of evolution itself, invali- 
dates his estimate of their validity. For, ontologically, it is held 
that the sum total of empirical reality, be it matter or force, is an 
unchanging quantity, and that all we have are mechanical inte- 
grations and disintegrations of this one matter or force. Under 
this view man is at least less than the Son of God. If it does not 
"take at least a man to beget a man," much less does it take a 
God. 

But really the merely empirical antecedents of man, his man- 
ners, morals and moralizing institutions of family, state and 
church is no valid measure of their worth. They are what they 
have become and do what they do, because of the implicit impulse 
to rationality, which is more explicit or developed than in earlier 
elementary forms. But logically we cannot make this judgment 
without the assumption of the plus element. Logically one is 
bound either to assume the miracle of the evolution of higher out 
of lower forms, or to doubt the applicability of the terms higher 
and better to any forms. In fact we often find these two incon- 
genial forms of judgment and mood strangely and illogically 
blended in the minds of students of the historical past of any 
creed or institution. Faith in the supersession of all other meth- 
ods of studying human institutions by the historical method, the 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 207 

consummate method of consummated man to date, and forever 
hereafter — faith in this method as a progressive development 
out of antiquated methods, and faith in progress generally, is 
often combined v^ith sceptical views as to the validity and v^orth 
of even the present. Depreciators of the past, they are at one 
moment appreciators of the present as the real golden age. The 
spirit of the Anfkldriing is upon them. With the unhistorical 
''age of reason,'' they believe that the present reason of historical 
students is the ultimate standard of adjudication of all institu- 
tions ; that the rational is finally to be found in the reason of the 
intellectually elite students of history. Weighed in the balance, 
the past of all institutions is found imperfect. And then, in the 
same spirit of the Enlightenment, the present form of all devel- 
oped institutions is found to be of little v^orth. The cold, scep- 
tical cynicism of the enlightenment is turned upon present in- 
stitutions and the Aiifkldrung, the rationalism of the "unhis- 
torical eighteenth century," becomes an Auskldrung — an out- 
clearing, not only of the unworthy past but of the unworthy 
present. 

Professor Sidgwick has aptly and logically classified these 
two heterogenous judgments — moods, I would rather say — of 
the exponents of the historical method as those of ''relativity" 
and "progressivism," or the destructive and the constructive 
judgments of the historical method.^ But he errs in making the 
destructive judgment illogical. For the whole of empiricism 
moves in the sphere of the relative, and that too of relatives that 
are relative to nothing other and higher than themselves. With- 
out ideals and a final cause, there is only change. 

Thing and environment, cause and effect, are all relatives — 
mere juxtapositions which may be changed the next moment — 
all are mere appearances which appear only to disappear. The 
disappearance of reality, in present as well as in past forms, 
becomes the theme. Here relativity attacks "the unique quality 

^Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations, p. 162. 



2o8 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of being true, which we attribute to the opinions of our own 
time." The imperfection and falsity of earHer forms of creed 
and deed cannot, without a miracle, be absent from their present 
forms. The lower cannot beget the higher. There is no higher : 
all are low. Burns's line — 

"A man's a man for a' that," 
becomes ''For a' that'' for his ascent from lower form, not his 
descent from God — he is not a man. 'Tor a' that" of the past 
of any institution, it is not a valid present institution. The pre- 
sent is relative to the "a' that" of the past, and both are only rel- 
ative transformations of an identical imperfect. A lie resting 
upon a lie in the past, cannot lead to anything but a lie in its 
present or future form. The indefinite regress into past imper- 
fection cannot lead to a definite progress into present perfection. 
No product can be separated from its process, and the product 
itself is in a process. Process and product are alike relative. 
The historical method, devoted primarily to the process, merges 
the product into the process. Terms dependent on relatives are 
themselves only relative terminals, and here we find no similia 
similibus for a cure. Everything is relative and fallible. Our 
judgment itself is relative and fallible. So evolution may be 
a devolution, and we become detractors of the present. Knowl- 
edge itself is relative — relative to the knower and to the known ; 
and the known is relative — relative to the knower and itself a 
lot of relations. Evolution is relative; the historical method is 
relative, and all relatives abstracted from an organic system can 
never be other than abstract, relative — untrue. In such a stage 
of thought, authority for judgments of truth and validity is no- 
wheres, and the liberty of license everywhere — no truth and 
hence no real freedom. 

Thus one mood of the historical method is intellectually, to 

sit apart, beholding all forms of creeds and deeds, while holding 

none, and practically to cease to urge men onward, as they are 

without the slightest idea of the goal, and finally to cease to 

"Scorn delights and live laborious days," 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 209 

in order ''to pass from the relative truth of the nineteenth, to the 
relative truth of the twentieth century, supposing the latter to be 
not a jot more true, or less merely relative than the former." 

Hegel, in speaking of those who follow the historical method 
in the study of dogmas, says that they are "like clerks of some 
mercantile house, who keep account only of somebody else's 
wealth without having any property of their own. It is true 
they receive a salary, but their chief function is to record the 

wealth of others They occupy themselves with truths that 

were truths for others. They know as little of the inner truth 
as a blind man does of a painting, even though he handles the 
frame. They know only how a certain dogma was established 
by this or that council, what reasons the framers of it advanced 

and how one or the other came to predominate Much is told 

us of the history of the painter of the picture and of the fate of 
the picture itself, what price it had at different times, into what 
hands it came, but we are never permitted to see anything of the 
picture itself."^ But the picture — ''The play's the thing" to 
catch the heart and conscience of true students of history. When 
the divine drama is not seen within the panorama of changing 
and relative scenes of history, our truly human interest must 
flag. We must get beyond the sphere of the relative ; get at the 
Hamlet of the play; get at the central, self-relating principles 
that make mere relatives to be significant, because seen to be 
relatives in an organic system. 

Indeed we must pass beyond the conception of relativity, in 
order to pronounce any stage of the process to be merely relative. 
There must be self-relation, system as a standard of judgment. 

Before passing to the consideration of the judgment of 
Progress, we may note another curiously topsy-turvy form of 
judgment, that the use of the strictly historical method some- 
times develops. Instead of depreciating the present rather than 
the past forms of institutions, w^e find such noted historical stu- 
dents as Professors Edwin Hatch, and A. Harnack, patiently 

^ Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, I, 41. 
14 



210 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

and successfully tracing the development of historical Christi- 
anity through nineteen centuries. They find the development 
of Christian polity, creed and ritual to have been a colossal 
blunder. But they believe in a golden past, a pure, primitive 
undeveloped form — an essence of Christianity, of which all de- 
veloped forms are degenerations — an evolution that is a devo- 
lution. They take us back and picture the empirical present of 
the life and times of a pious Jewish peasant, who wrote no 
book, developed no theology and established no definite institu- 
tion. From this, as from a germ and successive hostile envi- 
ronments, it developed, or rather degenerated, into the mighty 
and broad forms of the Christian Church. But the develop- 
ment has been only a smothering of the essence. There has 
been no God in history, at least in the development of historical 
Christianity.^ It has been a development of the husk to the 
smothering of the kernel of Christianity. This is only another 
form of the pessimism so often sequent upon the use of the his- 
torical method. 

The relativity of the relative, gives, as we have seen, at 
least suspense of judgment as to any historical process being 
true or false, good or bad. This is the logic of relativity. But 
when relativity is thought out ; when its inherent contradictions 
are made explicit, we are logically forced to the standpoint of 
self-relation, system, an organic whole, of which the relative 
parts are organic members. This organism may be a state or 
church, or humanity ; or it may be That in which all social or- 
ganisms live and move and have their being, without its being 
simply the total of them all. It is, in a word, the plus element 
of all empirical origins and histories, in the light of which alone 
we can see the significance of any organ, or its progressive 
improvement in its function as an organ. Professor Sidgwick, 
while holding that the historical method logically leads to the 
judgment of progress in the sociological sphere, denies that its 
lack of teleology precludes its being the final adjudicator in the 

'Cf. Chap. U. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 211 

matter. In fact, his praise of the judgment of progress is very- 
faint : "The one important lesson the method teaches us being 
the vague lesson of patience and hope."^ 

With this he hands the question over from the ''consensus of 
experts," to philosophy, or rather to ethics. Here again we find 
the weakness of his logic. It does not lead him to the "one far- 
off Divine event to which the whole creation moves. It leads 
him only to moral teleology. His ultimate postulate is that of 
a ''Moral order,'' Here he halts and declines to have the 
mind make its ascent to God. He believes that we may 
hold to a Moral order as ultimate, without the further pos- 
tulate of a Moral Orderer, "We may believe in Moral order — 
^the power not ourselves that makes for righteousness' (Mat- 
thew Arnold's well-worn formula) without connecting it 
with Personality."^ But here we are concerned not with 
Professor Sidgwick's views, but with the logic of the 
judgment of progress under the historical method. It may 
be said in passing, that both chronologically, and from the em- 
pirical standpoint, logically, his placing Relativism before Pro- 
gressivism is a mw-placement. Historically, the optimistic 
view of history came first. It was the child of Romanticism 
and of the idealistic philosophy of the nineteenth century. 
Lessing and Herder were inspired by the genetic method of 
studying history. And "genetic" is the explanatory term ap- 
plied to the historical method by its exponents. Gradual 
growth of the higher from lower forms of man's institutions 
through an immanent element of self-realization led back to a 
historical renaissance. Hegel gave the idealist impulse to the 
method that almost founded and largely dominated the his- 
torical school for a generation.^ The eternally human was al- 

^ Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations, p. 231. 

^ Op. cit. pp. 243-4. 

® Professor Sidgwick, a conspicuous exponent of the historical 
method and hostile to absolute Idealism, says that " the present pre- 
dominance of the historical method is largely due to Hegel." Sidg- 
wick's History of Ethics, p. 268. 



212 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

most divinized by the Romanticists, who sought to trace its 
progressive development or education in and through history. 
Hegel gave the logic of the method and stimulated the concrete 
study of history — far as this was removed from his own spe- 
cial speculative work. 

What is the meaning and order of the successive changing 
forms — in the history of any institution, of mankind itself? 
What part of ''the vision of splendid" has any age or people 
caught and partially embodied in its institutions ? The histor- 
ical sense had its origin in this romantic and idealistic view of 
the world — or rather of humanity. 

At this stage of the method, there was no question as to 
progress ; the gradual evolution of the involved generic nature 
of humanity. Every form of every human institution was 
looked upon as a degree of the actualization of the potential 
perfection of humanity, and as having its progressive degree of 
worth and validity. But later on the school fell under the 
dominance of the concepts of physical science. Thencefor- 
ward, the boast of progress becomes more feeble and, when- 
ever uttered, illogical. Psychologically, also, the progress- 
judgment is prior. The enthusiasm for the historical method 
is primarily optimistic. The historical sense uses the historical 
method to see the meaning and worth of any stage, and how it 
developed into forms of higher meaning and worth. Sincere 
and earnest and indefatigable pursuit of truth—the noble de- 
votion to the study of insignificant details, is primarily aroused 
and inspired by the belief that the significance and worth of 
any epoch or institution can best be seen and explained by the 
results of such a method. This, we have seen, was the mood of 
the earlier exponents of this method. The pessimistic mood 
in later scholars may be traced not only to academical weari- 
ness, but it is the logical result of such studies pursued under 
the conception of relativity. 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 213 

In fact, the pessimistic mood is logically reinforced by 
every form of empirical science that assumes the role of a meta- 
physis. Pessimism of the individual is logical, on the ground 
of every metaphysic that does not sustain the immeasurable 
value of the individual — the Christian as well as the modern 
estimate of the place and worth of the individual — by making 
the individual an organic member of an infinite and absolute 
system. For abstract individualism, neither science nor ethics, 
nor sociology, nor philosophy have any place. But for the 
concrete individual — for the infinite worth of the individual 
that is not an abstract finite separate self — for the individual 
as Christianity contemplates him as an organic member of the 
Kingdom of God, who ruleth over and in all, there is no place 
found by science in any of its empirical forms, masquerading as 
a sufficient explanation of the whole concrete of experience. 
To put this technically, it is because all forms of science — from 
mathematical physics to the historical view, move in the realm 
of relativity. They use the categories of the relative and not 
that of the self-related. And it is only in the organic sphere of 
the free, the self-related, that there can be found a valid ground 
for the infinite worth of the finite individual, and for the hope 
that, logically, banishes pessimism. To be without God is, log- 
ically, to be without hope, without any justification for the 
modern and Christian judgment of value of the individual. 
That is, the individual who cannot realize his identity, his 
organic unity with the supreme principle of the universe as 
good and true, can have but a temporary and foolish optimism 
as to his own high worth and destiny. 

(a) Modern science, when it assumes an ontological role, 
certainly destroys all logical grounds for the modern concep- 
tion of the place and worth of the individual. Physical sci- 
ence in this role is an impersonal physical pantheism. 

(&) Again, in the moral institutions of humanity, as ex- 
plained by the historical school, though the individual gets a 
place and a filling, the logical judgment must be pessimistic. 



214 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

In the family, in the state, in all institutions of human culture, 
the individual becomes relatively concrete and developed. But, 
then, humanity in all its educational and moralizing forms is 
itself merely relative. It is not complete, independent, Causa 
sui It is relative to an other that it is not itself. Taken in its 
highest ethical and altruistic form, the religion of humanity, of 
positivism, it is still in the realm of finitude and relativity, and 
cannot guarantee the infinite worth and destiny of the indi- 
vidual or of the whole organism of humanity itself. There can 
be no worship of the finite and relative, however large and long- 
lived that finite may be. Nor can any multi-magnified, poly- 
million age enduring organism guarantee any everlasting life. 

The finite — physical and ethical — ^bulk it as large as imagi- 
nation can picture — is always relative and dependent. There is 
always an other, an environment that bounds and limits it, so 
that it can have no true independence and no real efficient or 
final causality, till it is seen to be organically connected with a 
higher, spiritual environment. Not till its finitude and depen- 
dency can be seen to be that of a member of the total system of 
the Absolute — not till it can be seen to be potentially identical in 
principle with the Absolute, has it any guarantee of its own 
worth and destiny. It is one of the demonstrations of philoso- 
phy, as it has ever been one of the realized faiths of religion, 
that ''the finite, is capable of the infinite'' — not, indeed, as an ab- 
stract finite, but as a finite in organic relation with the infinite, 
or as a member through which pulsates the life of the whole. 
To make the other, that which humanity finds other and op- 
posed to itself, to be a physical universe, may give a world of 
physical and moral struggle of existence, but till that ^^ other'' is 
seen to be God, struggle and not victory is the only possible 
judgment. To make the whole known and knowable of experi- 
ence, to have as its limiting ''other'' the Unknowable, kith and 
kinship with which, being an unwarranted assumption, as 
Spencer does, is to create a dualism that negates independence. 

One may safely challenge any form of empiricism for a 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 215 

justification of the judgments of progress and optimism. And 
one may safely, without any danger of refutation, challenge 
any form of science that assumes to be a sufficient and final ex- 
planation of experience, to deny the charge that it has no 
place for God, freedom and immortality. It is simply and 
absolutely impossible for it to do so logically, because the 
categories with which it works are those of the finite, the rela- 
tive, the dependent. It is not till we criticise these categories 
into the ultimate one of Self-Consciousness; till we see these 
categories of quantity and relations criticise themselves into 
the category of the self-related — the independent, the total sys- 
tem, as mind or spirit, that we can have any full rational ex- 
planation, of either physical nature or of humanity's whence, 
where and whither. Scientific men are justly and logically ag- 
nostic, from the viewpoint of science. Science, as science, has 
no need of the hypothesis of the ideals of humanity, however 
much men of science may and do have them. But they have 
them when they recognize the limits of science, and also allow 
thought to have its perfect work and full fruition in the absolute 
objectivity of spirit, as the genesis and goal of the whole proc- 
ess of the physical universe. 

Theists may and must accept all the demonstrated results 
of mechanical science and of the historical method, and scien- 
tific men may and must accept all the fundamental principles 
of religion and philosophy, i. e., whenever they think the thing 
through, or see the self-criticism of the lower categories into 
the ultimate one of Self-consciousness. 

Finally we may say that the dialectic of thought forces us 
from the categories of physical science and of the historical 
method to the ultimate one of thought — that is — well, let us put 
it frankly — to God — from, through and to Whom are all things 
finite, and in Whom they all find their function and worth. 
That, and not matter, force, ether, electricity, or any more re- 
fined form of the ultimate world-stuff is the only sufficient First 
Principle of an ontological explanation of all phases of the proc- 



2i6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

ess of the finite. Than self-consciousness or personality there is 
nothing higher in thought or being. Only in Absolute Person- 
ality are thought and being, the real and the rational identical. 
Nothing sub-personal is a sufficient First Principle of explana- 
tion, and nothing can be supra-personal except as a fuller hu- 
man apprehension of the Personal, above all the limitations of 
finite personality. Thought, mind, self-consciousness, person- 
ality being thus the loftiest ne plus ultra principle, becomes the 
ultimate principle of explanation of both nature and humanity. 
Thus the science of nature and of history must be supplemented 
or rather fulfilled by a philosophy of nature, and a philosophy 
of history. But these can never be merely abstract. They only 
give the form while science and history give the data for the fill- 
ing. In this sense they are always dependent upon science and 
history. At best they can take the data up to date, and interpret 
them rationally — that is, as stages in the process of the finite 
within the Infinite Form. Hence too new advances in science 
and new acquisitions in history compel a revision of the details 
as to rationality. Thus modem science compels philosophy 
(and philosophy is always speculative, theoretical theology) to 
revise its theory of creation and its chronology to accord with 
the theory of evolution. And the results of the historical 
method compel it to revise its theory of the j^ire divino origin of 
State and Church and all other forms of moralizing institutions. 
Only they never do, and never can compel its revision of the ul- 
timate form of explanation — the rationality of the universe, 
whatever the new details of the process may be, as a process of 
becoming perfect in and through the Eternally Perfect. 

Philosophy despises the cheap form of criticising any science, 
as science should despise the cheap form of criticising theology, 
f. e., that of holding up the mistakes of science ; of arraying the 
exploded theories in physics, chemistry, medicine, geology, and 
biology as proofs of their futility. Surely the historical method 
applied to any one of the sciences, reveals as lowly and gro- 
tesque and now unthinkable forms through which it has devel- 



THE HISTORICAL METHOD 217 

oped, as it does when applied to religious and ethical theories 
and institutions.^ Philosophy itself is above dates and changes. 
But the philosophy of nature, of history and of religion are not 
so. They are not so, simply because they are dependent for their 
material upon the ever-changing and ever-increasing details and 
developing theories of science and history. If it were possible 
for these ever to make a full inventory and systematization of 
their data — then a final form of the philosophy — that is — of the 
whole process of nature and history would be possible, and that 
would be a rational explanation that would be a Theodicy — a 
justification of the ways of God in the process. 

^ Cf. Appendix, note 7. 



CHAPTER V 

ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA* 

Two facts are patent to-day — the decay and the vitality of 
ecclesiasticism. Both are really phases of the religious life 
instituting and nourishing itself with continuity and progress 
into a vital organism of the life of the spirit. The term im- 
pedimenta is a convenient one for describing the general char- 
acteristics of this critical and vital movement of ecclesiasti- 
cism. We may use it, first, in its vulgar sense, of those things 
which impede and are not necessary to the being or the well- 
being of the Church ; secondly and chiefly, in its classical sense 
of things which encumber but still are necessary, assisting as 
well as impeding progress — the necessary means of subsist- 
ence and equipment; the supplies, baggage and ammunition 
carried along with an army. 

It is evident that man is by nature a churchman or ecclesi- 
ast, as well as a political being. Ecclesiasticism is as genuine 
and rational a manifestation of human nature as domestic and 
political institutions. Any merely destructive criticism of the 
Church is unhuman, and ends with pouring out the baby with 
the bath, to use the German illustration. Nor can we say that 
the whole mass must be swallowed uncritically. We find that 
in opposite quarters both these terms — ecclesiasticism and 
criticism — are in ill repute, as, indeed, they should be when 
divorced from each other. But they should not seem to be 
as mutually repugnant as water and oil. Both stand for real 
and necessary phases of an organic process. Both are, in 
varying proportions, age-old, and give promise of being as 
age-long as man's secular existence. They are both necessary 
factors in the ethical life of man. Ages of the most absolute 

^ Cf. a partial reprint from an article in The New World, September, 
1892. 

218 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 219 

ecclesiasticism have never been free from some ferment of 
the critical element, and ages of the most radical criticism 
have never been v^ithout their romantic side. 

The rational ideal to-day seems to be that of a critical ec- 
clesiasticism, that is, of a visible working church, fully recog- 
nizing the results of the modern criticism of its own historical 
elements, and yet basing itself upon these criticised elements 
as answering to human nature and needs on their religious 
side. Men of culture to-day cannot accept an ecclesiasticism 
which has not been through the fires of criticism, nor will they 
tolerate mere negative critics, "those nomads of the intellectual 
world, who will not permit any steady cultivation of the soil." 
We must frankly and fairly apply all the critical powers of the 
human spirit to all sources of information as to the genesis 
and growth of the Church, in order to get that concrete ra- 
tional comprehension of it that proves it to be founded on the 
very rock, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. The 
work done in this line during the last century has been pro- 
digious. It enables us to put ourselves in the place of the 
chief actors, of those who have been the mouthpieces and the 
toolmen of the nascent and developing Church. Granting all 
the results of such work, the question comes. Is the Church 
worth preserving? But the vitality of the institution answers 
the question by continuing to exist. 

The question may be raised as to the possibility of a critical 
ecclesiasticism, of a church that lives and thrives under criti- 
cism. It is at least certain that we can have critical ecclesi- 
asts. Dean Stanley, Professor Edwin Hatch and the authors 
of ''Lux Mundi" show us the union of the two elements. No 
critic was ever more free and thorough-going in his study of 
the origin and growth of ecclesiastical institutions than Dean 
Stanley, and no ecclesiast was ever more heart and hand with 
a conservative form of the Church than himself.^ 

^ The hon-mot of DTsraeli is well known. In an after-dinner speech 
Dean Stanley inveighed strongly against all dogmas in the church. DTs- 



220 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

We wish to say something of the impedimenta of the 
Church — distinguishing between those which come under the 
vulgar use of the term and those which come under its clas- 
sical sense. There are two large questions, however, demand- 
ing at least brief notice beforehand. What is the Church? 
and What is the ideal of knowledge by which we are to esti- 
mate it and its impedimenta? 

The Church, considered as an objective historical fact, may 
be described as the religious community, springing from and 
embodying the religious self-consciousness of Jesus Christ. 
It is the visible community to which the religious spirit in men, 
influenced by the spirit of Jesus Christ, gave rise — not as an 
absolutely new organization, but as having its roots primarily 
in Judaism, and, later on, its branches in the Graeco-Roman 
civilization. It is the institution which the new leaven worked 
in the social lump coming under its influence. It is visible, 
one, organic and continuous through nineteen centuries. It 
is as objective a fact as a continent or a nation. It is some- 
thing to be reckoned with in making an inventory of concrete 
human nature or reason, regardless of any a priori theories 
as to the method of its organization. As an organism it has 
functions. It exists for the edification of its members, and 
for propagation, or conquering by disciplining all foes. Hence 
it has an oflftcial organization of life, doctrine and worship. 
It grew, and it still grows, and demands appreciative interpre- 
tation. After all the work of critical and historical investi- 
gations as to the how and why of its various external forms, 
comes the deeper task of rational estimation. We need be 
bound by no traditional views of its historical genesis and vari- 
ations, but may accept the general results of modern scientific 
investigation on these points. The organization of the early 
Christian Churches and their consolidation into the Catholic 



raeli nudged him and said, "Yes, Dean, but then you must remember that 
no dogma means no Dean." 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 221 

Church under Constantine, are matters of history pretty well 
understood. In every way the Church is open to as free his- 
torical investigation as any other religious, social or political 
organization. We must take it for what it is, and for what 
it has been, rather than yield to the assumptions of either an 
abstract supernaturalism or an equally abstract intellectualism. 

What the Church is for us, depends upon our ideal of 
knowledge. Here again we must claim to be passing beyond 
the eighteenth, yes, and largely the nineteenth century's ab- 
stract conception of reason. Under that conception there was 
no suspicion that even reason is a development; that it never 
has existed as an inborn finished codex of clear, fixed notions. 
Still less could these rationalists apprehend the conception 
that the truths of reason have been developed only through 
institutional forms of human activity; that every category 
which is now used has had a history of incarnation, and that 
the highest spiritual truths are the most elaborate products 
of a long process of the developing impulse of the human 
spirit. Hence, with their shallow intellectual criticism, they 
could never penetrate to any rational understanding of ecclesi- 
asticism as one of the forms of the real in which the rational 
— that is, human nature in its highest sense — was realizing 
itself. 

What human nature or reason is, is to be learned only from 
human history. The ideal of knowledge on this plane should 
then be a concrete view of the human spirit developing in the 
various spheres of its activity. To the query. What is truth? 
the old rationalism answered confidently, logical, intellectual 
form for the individual. Now the answer should be, that hu- 
man reason to date is the organic sum total of the aesthetic, 
ethical, religious, scientific and philosophical manifestations 
of the human spirit. The impulse to rationality in man has 
not confined itself to the channel of the logical understanding. 
Its generous flood has made other and deeper channels, and 
left sesthetical, ethical and religious categories as monuments 



222 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of its self-manifestation. Hence, in treating of ecclesiastical 
impedimenta, we should recognize the absurdity of misapply- 
ing the canons of logical truth. Granted that these canons of 
formal truths have been developed out of the impulse of our 
mind toward logical knowledge, and toward bringing phe- 
nomena to unity, we must also grant that religion rises out of 
an impulse to establish a right relation between ouselves and 
God. The Church, no less than logic and science, rises out 
of an invincible need of human nature, and as such is a mani- 
festation of its progressive rationality. It can no more ra- 
tionally be called a disease or a perversion than the other mani- 
festations. Is there any need of a Church? Human nature 
has given the affirmative answer, historically. Is the Church a 
member of the civic order of the nation? The same answer 
is given by history. Is it a development of the impulse to 
rationality? Yes, or else nothing is, and we have absolute 
agnosticism instead of an ideal of knowledge. 

We are exceedingly far from identifying the truth of ec- 
clesiasticism with all truth, or of giving it an undue suprem- 
acy. It is much better and quite proper to distinguish the 
Church from the Kingdom of God. We may well use this 
latter term for the organic sum total of the developments of 
the human spirit in all phases of its activity. It is one with 
our ideal of reality. It is reason so far as it has been incar- 
nate. But it is therefore far too broad and developed a form 
to apply to ecclesiasticism in testing its impedimenta. That 
would be measuring the part by the whole. The Church is 
not even identical with moral and spiritual goodness wherever 
found. It is a definite, visible organization, though a very 
real and lively member of that total organization of the true, 
the good and the beautiful among men which we term the 
Kingdom of God. It exists, not to teach formal logical truth, 
or natural science, or even aesthetics and ethics, though its mis- 
sion is much more akin to these latter two, and its kind of re- 
ality to theirs. It seeks to elevate man above time and sense 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 223 

relations into communion with the eternal fountain of life, and 
to do this through maintaining an ethical communion of its 
members in this effort. 

Hence its teaching must be largely symbolical, using lit- 
eral time-and-space things in a transcendent sense, and thus 
rendering void all merely literal criticism of its symbols. Its 
reality is the ideal of perfect piety, of a communion of saints, 
and not that of common rationalism, nor even of a philosophy 
of religion. It has little to do with dry, unveiled literaHsm. 
The vulgar rationalism still lingering among us to-day is de- 
void of the historical and the humane spirit. It despises all 
symbolical acts, and cannot understand a cult, which is essen- 
tial to the edification of the Church in worship. It cannot 
understand dogma, which is the essential intellectual work of 
the Church in defining its supersensuous reality. It cannot 
understand its sacred literature, and, using its own canons, it 
cannot understand any literature beyond that of the multipli- 
cation table and the syllogism. It can partially understand its 
polity, but only to hate it for being an efficient means of main- 
taining and propagating itself m its role of the educator of the 
race in the communal religious life. It would also dispense 
with the historical basis for the world's evangelization, and 
with all incorporations of the ideal in living forms and marked 
typical events of history. Given its way, it would either dis- 
pense wholly with the Church, or endeavor to manufacture 
one which would be no Church, and would afford no home for 
the religious life. 

The Church knows what edifies, and its strenuous main- 
tenance of these means is justified by the power which they 
have given it to live and grow. This is one of the most prac- 
tical of all tests of the reality of an organism. Treat art as 
the old rationalism would treat religion, and it would vanish 
away from among men. We should ask what the Church has 
done in the world and what it is now doing, and take the most 
objective of all judgments, that of history, as to its being a 



224 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

genuine world-power, manifesting and promoting the great 
reality which all religion seeks. Thus, in studying ecclesiasti- 
cism, one should reflect on the nature of religion itself, its 
own proper idea and function in the complex of human na- 
ture's activity, as well as upon the ground for its appearance 
in this or that form, in order to appreciate, and thus only to un- 
derstand it. As an objective reality, the Church and her ways 
stand as a marvel of unconscious logic realizing itself in his- 
tory. Only an a priori hatred of religion, which pessimistic- 
ally sees in it nothing more than a prolonged disease of human 
nature, can treat this objective institution with disrespect. 
And only a barren intellectualism will insist on criticising it 
by other canons than those of its own nature and function. 

I. Are there, then, no ecclesiastical impedimenta, in the 
vulgar sense of the term — is there no negative criticism of the 
Church? Is not our criticism like Balaam's curse? — 'T called 
thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether 
blessed them." We have, indeed, thus far sought to ward off 
the irrational subjective criticism which is so plentiful. We 
need not, however, shun full criticism of the impedimenta that 
hinder the Church from fulfilling its own true mission. We 
only insist that these can merely be such as are foreign to its 
genius, or have outgrown their usefulness. Taking the 
Church's ideal and mission, many things can be pointed out 
as being useless and injurious hindrances. The Church mili- 
tant is not the Church triumphant. Its follies and sins are 
patent in all ages. But the same is true of every other insti- 
tution. The political history of the race is full of errors and 
crimes. The evils of the law are enormous. And yet we 
would not abolish the state or law. The history of any one of 
the natural sciences shows follies as absurd and errors as in- 
jurious as can be found in either State or Church. The ideal 
of any organization is never realized, and yet the ideal only 
comes into consciousness through the progressive realization 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 225 

of the impulse. The Church simply takes her place with other 
secular institutions in pleading guilty to such failures. 

Let us frankly refuse to admit any real impediments to the 
marriage of humanity with the bride of Christ. Let us insist 
upon the Church putting away all such impediments. The 
critical and historical studies concerning the Church have 
doubtless disclosed a vast amount of dead, ecclesiastical rub- 
bish, trash, needless scaifolding, bric-a-brac, chips from the 
growmg statue, decayed branches of the growing tree, suck- 
ers that are needlessly and criminally draining its strength, 
fungoid growths, parasitic vines, superfluous clothing upon the 
racer and armor on the warrior — things that do not make for 
the edification or the propagation of the Church, and which 
the Church, nevertheless, holds on to as essential. It is a 
sympathetic and generous criticism which calls the attention 
of the Church to these impediments, many of which, however, 
she has encysted into innocuous inactivity. 

Again, from the longest-lived branch of the Church to the 
most novel modern sect, there is not one form that has not 
outgrown, and of itself cast aside, much of its earlier impedi- 
menta. There has been sufficient of the normal life-power in 
every one to use up much of its supplies and to drop the rub- 
bish. That ecclesiasticism is ultra-conservative is one of the 
facts of human nature on that side that is to be taken into ac- 
count. Demands cannot, therefore, be made upon it that 
should be made upon other inherently less conservative insti- 
tutions. To each according to its nature, is certainly a canon 
of rational criticism. In the long run the Church discards 
what does not, and adopts what does, edify. The indictment 
against the evils of conservative traditionalism is made none 
too strong by even hostile critics. This temper has often led 
her champions to commit the most glaring crimes against 
the very foundation principles of morality and humanity, in 
order to maintain the old as the true, and defeat the new as the 
false. But in the long run it shows a capacity to assimilate 

IS 



226 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

the best elements of the life of any age, toward the close of 
that age, and to renounce its own defects and malformations 
on its way to new and fuller life. It has life. Hence we find 
in every form, the normal, though tardy process of excretion 
going along with that of assimilation. Volumes would be 
needed to catalogue the mass of impedimenta thus discarded. 
We must decline to renew the task here which has already been 
accomplished by friend and foe. From the dropping by the 
early Church of the rites of foot-washing and the Agapae in- 
stituted by Christ himself, to the change from hooks and 
eyes to buttons by the Dunkards, perpetual changes through 
additions and subtractions have been going on within this or- 
ganic body, moved by its own vital, semi-unconscious ideal 
of reality. 

The form and the interpretation of her sacred literature, 
her sacraments, her ceremonies and ritual, her organization 
and her creeds, have undergone wondrous changes, consider- 
ing the inherent conservatism of the Church. The Episcopal 
Church has practically discarded her once dominant standard 
of the XXXIX Articles as "forty stripes save one.'' The 
Preface to the Prayer Book sets forth, as the rule for all such 
changes, ''that which may seem most convenient for the edi- 
fication of the people according to the various exigencies of 
the times and occasions," ''seeking to keep the happy mean be- 
tween too much stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness 
in admitting, variations in things once advisedly established," 
although "in their own nature indifferent and alterable," al- 
ways allowing "such just and favorable construction as in 
common equity ought to be allowed to all human writings." 
The decision of the Church of Rome in regard to the novel 
"Faribault example," as well as the recognition of the Republic 
in France, and the Encyclical on the labor question, illustrate 
the tardy but generally forthcoming adaptation of the most 
ultra-conservative form of the Church to the needs of the 
times. Ample apology, however, could easily be made for the 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 227 

Church's tardiness in all such matters. Conservatism is bound 
up with her very life and with her power to fulfill her mission. 

Again, criticism of impedimenta from within the Church 
itself, is afifected by her relatively peaceful or militant condi- 
tion. Her general attitude is that of the Church militant — 
an army always preparing for contest even when in secure 
camp or fortress. A Church passing through a reformation, 
like a ship in a storm or an athlete in a race, will spontaneously 
cast aside as real impediments many of the articles of luxury 
and of relative necessity in times of peace. Baggage will be 
thrown into the furnace for fuel, or cast overboard to lighten 
the vessel, which otherwise forms a part of its precious cargo. 
After the storm, the race, the battle, much of the discarded 
impedimenta will be recovered for renewed use in edifying 
and propagating the Church. An ecclesiastical renaissance 
is sure to follow an ecclesiastical revolution. Protestant scho- 
lasticism followed quite hard upon the revolt against mediaeval 
scholasticism, and the drift from a bald Protestantism to the 
more constitutional and aesthetic forms of church life has been 
going on ever since the Reformation. The Society of Friends, 
starting with the quaking excitements of its early converts, 
soon settled down into a formalism of quiet informality, and 
now furnishes a large number of members to the most litur- 
gical of the Protestant communions. Unitarianism, having 
fairly won its negative victory against a dead intellectual or- 
thodoxy, is likewise sending its large quota to the same church. 
The New Theology, now carrying on the more constructive 
criticism of Calvinism, claims to be a theological renaissance 
rather than a novelty. Back to the Fathers and the early and 
mediaeval Church ! is the war cry of the most narrow type of 
zealots in the Episcopal Church to-day, and yet they have 
enough truth to carry a large part of the interest of the Church 
towards a somewhat needed ecclesiastical renaissance. 

Distasteful as may be the methods, spirit and ethics of 
many of the promoters of such a renaissance in our day, we 



228 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

may gladly have the work done. However much more con* 
genial one may at times find the intellectual fellowship of 
those who are fully in touch with modern culture, he cannot 
allow his taste to prevent him from enjoying his larger spirit- 
ual heritage, and encouraging the renaissance which is to put 
him in touch with all his spiritual ancestry. The modern 
spirit has been in danger of having its interest so centred upon 
local affairs as to neglect its classical inheritance. Human- 
ism is often a needed antidote to Philistinism in the Church 
as well as in literature. 

History, however, never repeats itself except with a dif- 
ference. The healthy life of the Church will make abortive 
all attempts at a mere renaissance of any earlier form. In any 
renaissance many new forces and materials are added, many 
of the old forms are discarded, and the remnant is modified 
and transmuted by the differing environing needs and culture. 
The old gospel is ever new, even in its donning of ancient 
garb. It is impossible to specify in detail the amount and sort 
of ecclesiastical rubbish thus discarded. This would require 
a history of each great branch, and of every minor form of 
ecclesiastical organization. Hooks and eyes may be dropped 
for modern buttons, but days of luxurious peace may come 
when the old hooks and eyes will regain their place, though 
they will then be made of pure gold. The use or disuse of 
all such unessential impedimenta must be left to the taste, in- 
tellectual and moral as well as aesthetic, of the various socie- 
ties. 

Doctrinaries of Liberalism and Puritanism alike in their 
Philistinism w^ould strip the Church bare of decent clothing. 
Both are utterly unappreciative of the sentiment and symbol- 
ism that are inseparable from the instituted form of the re- 
ligious life. In vain will they attempt to unclothe historical 
Christianity, by setting up the literal form of the anti-ecclesi- 
astical religion of the Christ when on earth. In vain will they 
stigmatize as "baptized Paganism," and ''caricatures of the 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 229 

holiest/' the concrete forms of the Hving Church, which claims 
to be the extension of the Incarnation, the Christ widened into 
the concrete life of the community. They denounce the letter 
of the Church against the spirit of the Gospel, being incap- 
able of appreciating the spirit of the letter of the Church, the 
aesthetic and edifying side of ecclesiastical symbolism. Once 
an infant, always and infant, expresses the unhistorical Puri- 
tanic view of Christianity. "The invisible Church" is another 
term for the same abstract view of Christianity. This answers 
to the conception of an unincarnate soul in this world. It is a 
contradiction of terms. For what is invisible is not actually 
the Church, and what is the Church is not invisible. Even the 
largest term for human reason, ''the Kingdom of God," as 
the organic sum total of the work of the human spirit under 
divine education, is not without visible embodiments. The 
term ''ethical Christianity" is another abstraction supposed to 
represent the real elements of Christianity. But the subjec- 
tive ethical is itself the product of the objective ethos of the 
community, of its manners, customs and clothes. The ethical 
is the social, even in Christianity. It is expressed Christianity, 
the leavened lump. 

IL This concrete, historical, objective view of Christian- 
ity brings us to the second or classical sense of the term im- 
pedimenta, as those things which encumber but still are neces- 
sary to existence and progress, the necessary means of subsist- 
ence and of armament of the Church militant. For the double 
purpose of self-edification and self-propagation, the Church 
has always found that it needs an official organization of its 
life, teaching and worship. The intrinsic difiference between 
an army and the character, functions and end of the Church 
necessitate a somewhat broader use of the term impedimenta. 
To abbreviate the matter without refining too much, let us 
take the Declaration of the House of Bishops in the General 
Convention of 1886, and of the "Lambeth Conference of Bish- 



230 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

ops of the Anglican Communion" in 1888, as stating the es- 
sential impedimenta of the Catholic Church, viz. : — 

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as "con- 
taining all things necessary to salvation,'* and as being the rule and 
ultimate standard of faith. 

2. The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene 
Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. 

3. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself, — Baptism and 
the Supper of the Lord, — ministered with unfailing use of Christ's 
words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by him. 

4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its 
administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called 
of God into the unity of his church. 

To substantiate these positions in brief, appeal can be made 
from all subjective tastes and local and temporary prejudices, 
to the objective judgment of history. The history of the 
Church is the judgment of the Church. The organic force of 
the nev^ leaven, the extension of the Incarnation, has always 
and everyw^here manifested itself, edified itself and propagated 
itself through these channels. We have here two classes of 
impedimenta: ist, those which minister to the edification of 
the body — the Holy Scriptures and the Sacraments ; and 2d, 
those which minister to its extension — the creed and polity of 
the Church. In some form, these essential impedimenta are 
found in every branch and sect of the Church. The test is, 
what administers to edification and to growth? The instinc- 
tive logic of the vital organism of the Church has always found 
these four points to be essential. Surely the Church is suffi- 
ciently able to speak for itself. Surely its presence in history 
as one of the greatest institutions of the human spirit is pow- 
erful and great enough to warn oflf any external abstract judg- 
ment as to what is essential to it. To be a world-power, it 
claims that it must be catholic in length as well as breadth. 
It therefore rightly denies the rationality of utterly moderniz- 
ing the Church. It demands continuity in these four essen- 
tials. 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 231 

We must grant that religious experience is only one ex- 
tract out of the whole circle of the contents of human effort ; 
that the Kingdom of God is the truly catholic manifestation 
of human nature : but taking this limited range of ecclesiasti- 
cism, we must claim for it that the present Christian conscious- 
ness forms but a small part of the catholic Christian conscious- 
ness. That of every age has been modified by the larger con- 
sciousness of humanity in all the range of its experience. 
Every age has the defects of its own virtues. Let us recog- 
nize all the virtues of our own age, but not mistake them for 
the total of those of many ages. ''Modern culture" is a con- 
venient term for housing the results of human nature's con- 
quests in the later centuries. But the very word ''modern" 
defines it as a limited culture. The scientific and historical 
and critical and social and philosophical acquirements of the 
times are not the manifestations of the whole of human nature. 
Ecclesiasticism is also a part of this complex. Men may very 
wrongfully and irrationally repudiate their connection with 
the past, but the Church does not. Its consciousness is age- 
long and world-wide. Modern culture does not meet all hu- 
manity's needs, and the Church claims its part in this supply 

Moreover, it claims its catholic pedigree. It claims the 
need of preserving the old within its present living fold, in 
order to continuity, strength and expansion. We may adapt 
an illustration from Von Hartmann."^ In a tree, the real life 
from the roots is found in the present new layer. The solid 
stem of dead wood which defies the storm is formed by the 
earlier growths. The leaves and fruitage of past years help 
towards this year's fruitage only as they fall to the ground and 
form soil for the roots, while the slight annular growth has 
increased its girth, height and solidity. Holding all these in 
the embrace of its newest layer gives it expansion as well as 
strength. Hence the first law for the newly sprouting ring is 
really to embrace and enfold all its predecessors ; the second, to 

^Philosophie des Unhewussten, iii. 



2Z2 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

grow from the root upwards semi-independently. Such has 
been the method, the unconscious logic, of the CathoHc Church. 
Many of the supposed impedimenta have really been encysted 
to give strength and expansion, and all the essential impedi- 
menta have been preserved in its growth from the root upward, 
— a catholic polity, creed, sacraments, and sacred literature. 

No criticism can destroy these four facts done into history 
by the Church. Open as they are to the most free investiga- 
tion of their historical how, when and why, they still remain 
as essential impedimenta of an institution that must command 
the respect of all that have respect for any of the works of man 
under divine tutelage. At times and in places, each one of 
them has been used so as to unnecessarily impede the progress 
of the church, as well as of the larger spiritual realm of the 
kingdom of God. Bibliolatry, sacerdotalism, orthodoxy and 
ecclesiasticism, in the vulgar sense of these terms, have sinned 
against as well as served the religious edification of many gen- 
rations. The criticism which removes the false gloss from 
these four facts seems powerless to destroy them. It can only 
remove the false abstract, ''Thus saith the Lord," before each 
one of them, to replace it with a concrete historical vindication 
of them as genuine works of the Lord. 

It is an old ecclesiastical illusion to identify a divine origin 
with a certain method of that origin. It is a modern delusion 
to deny a divine origin to anything which can be traced to its 
nascent form in the womb of human nature. Some things 
are divine, and no things are divine, — these are twin forms of 
error that the concrete, rational estimate of institutions is to 
correct. In doing this work, it will receive but scant thanks 
from some in both camps. The narrow zealot and the zealous 
liberal will each have epithets of malignity to hurl at those who 
seek to set forth the objective rationality and divineness of 
human institutions. We are familiar, on the one hand, with 
such terms of reproach as pantheism and rationalism, and 
superstition and anthropomorphism on the other hand. And 



ECCLESIASTICAL IMPEDIMENTA 233 

yet the work goes bravely and rapidly forward, and seems 
destined to bring out the fuller inclusive truth of the body and 
soul of the progressive creation of man. 

It is the historical and practical estimates, and the changed 
emphasis of them, that enable and compel us to hold to these 
four points in a strictly non-sectarian and super-denomina- 
tional spirit. We have used the term "ecclesiasticism'' 
throughout, only in its rational sense of the visible organization 
of the Christian religion. It has not come within our limits to 
deal with it in its current vulgar sense. Like the term ''poli- 
tics,'' it is commonly, and fairly enough perhaps, used to de- 
note a perverted and vicious method and spirit in the practi- 
cal working of the organization. The indictment against these 
twin evils cannot well be made too heavy or severe. The mere 
ecclesiast is always practically a Jesuit, as the mere politician 
is a Machiavellian. There is always need of keeping alive a 
vigorous sentiment against them both, in order to minimize 
the evils connected with the practical working of the two great 
rational and necessary forms of well-being in the kingdom of 
God on earth — the Church and the State. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY* 

'The Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion" 
was the title of a notable essay a generation ago. There are 
but few signs of any abatement of that aversion yet. The 
dissonance of dissent makes fully as much noise as the asso- 
nance of assent makes harmony in the world of theological 
dogma to-day. Even the assent is not as cordial as could be 
desired. Many who profess to like plenty of solid old dogmas 
swallow them with wry faces. ''What is the truth?" asked 
Lady Chettam of Mrs. Cadwallader, in ''Middlemarch." 'The 
truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic,— nasty to take and 
sure to disagree." Many, again, who complain of the old fet- 
ters, are prepared to forge brand-new creeds to fetter others 
in turn. Others, more disgusted, are ready to apply to all 
dogmas Dr. O. W. Holmes's jeu d' esprit on medicine: "Men 
would be none the worse off if the whole materia medica were 
dumped into the ocean, — ^but it would be all the worse for the 
fish." 

However striking all such epigrams may seem, they con- 
tain the usual proportion of nine-tenths falsehood to one part 
of truth. No organized body of wisdom of any one profession 
or art could be thus dumped into oblivion without ruining 
many and great human interests, nor without making progress 
to some better form impossible. Such an iconoclastic proced- 
ure is, indeed, wholly out of sympathy with the regnant his- 
torical spirit of the day. What were the wants and their en- 
vironments that made such creeds and institutions grow, and 
what are the new wants and environments which may be or- 

*A partial reprint of an article in The Andover Review, July, 1892. 

234 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY 235 

ganically related to them in further progress? Such is the 
question which the historical method puts to every form of 
human creed, profession, and institution. How did they grow, 
evolve, and what is the probable trend of their future develop- 
ment? Nothing human is alien to the historical spirit It is 
reverent in its study of all of anthropology, in the widest sense 
of the term. The lowest forms of animal life command the 
utmost interest of students of nature, and the lowest forms of 
human thoughts and hopes are surely none the less worthy of 
the student of man. The meanest flower of the human spirit 
that blows 

"Can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

Surely, the historical spirit to-day will recover for us the worth 
of creeds that the vulgar rationalism of an unhistorical age 
criticised almost to the death. If not, the method is untrue 
to itself, and is not as regnant as its claims to be. 

The whole question of the use and abuse of creeds is very 
far from being a simple one. Creeds have a history, and are 
explicable by nothing less than all their history of making ar- 
ticulate human needs, and furnishing answers to human wants. 
Humanity is an organism ; past and present, parent and child, 
"crabbed age and youth," do live together, so that this twen- 
tieth century can only, at the peril of its spiritual life, cut itself 
off from that of other ages. 

The sympathetic study of other great world-religions is 
producing a vaster and more complex appreciation of the spirit 
of humanity, and it is but fair to suppose that in due time the 
same spirit will rescue Christianity from the philistines of 
vulgar rationalism, and recognize its immense significance as 
a work of the spirit which nothing but a suicidal unreason will 
dare to ignore. This historical spirit and comparative method 
will soon be busy in raising from the deeps of oblivion and 
obloquy every form of Christian belief, not merely in the way 
of an amateur antiquarianism, but with genuine interest in its 



236 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

own spiritual heritage. It will lead us to put ourselves in the 
place of all the church doctors of creed-making ages. Theo- 
retically, at least, the historical method has banished to the 
limbo of phantoms the abstract individual who used to be pa- 
raded as the creator and monarch of himself, and has turned 
its attention to the social man as a member of an age-long and 
world-wide organism. It thus declines to hear any individual 
say, ''I believe/' and insists upon his speaking in the plural 
number, and for the past as well as present experience. We, 
the church of the ages, believe. The / always implies the we. 
And the present zve always implies the they of previous gener- 
ations of Christians. /, the heir of nineteen centuries of 
Christendom, believe. Such is the only formula that the his- 
torical method can permit any rational Christian to utter to- 
day. 

The historical method is simply that of evolution applied to 
the work of the human spirit instead of to nature. Difference 
of nature and spirit necessarily modify the method and the re- 
sults in the two cases. Again, this method cannot tolerate any 
would-be new creed makers. Languages, institutions, creeds, 
are not made, they grow. Only topsy-turvy abnormalities can 
be thus manufactured insfanter. Nor will the method permit 
fragments of doctrine to be torn from their natal context and 
their organic place, by either friend or foe of creed. It all 
grew, and can only be appreciated through a sympathetic 
study of the history of the organism, as a work of the spirit. 
The historical method is the category of rationality in the hu- 
manities to-day, as that of evolution is in science. It is only 
when this modern spirit is caught napping that it will listen 
to any pro and con arguments based upon the abstract concep- 
tion of rationality of the eighteenth century. It is true that no 
one formula is sufficient to fully express the spirit and method 
of an age. And yet formulas do give us definite general meas- 
ures of various epochs. In the eighteenth century, the ration- 
alism of the mere understanding got the supremacy, and the 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORINIITY 237 

category then used was that of "naturahsm," which conceived 
all things as static, permanent, distinct. Innate ideas, com- 
mon sense, natural religion, and immutable conscience ; the 
rights of man, and the uniformity of nature, reason and reve- 
lation, — everything had the static form that could be weighed, 
measured, and defined. The criticism of the understanding 
was considered to be able to strip off all the adventitious wrap- 
pings and reveal their common static elements. Unhistoricity 
was the characteristic of its whole study of human institutions, 
beliefs, and ideals. Human nature, like nature, had been made 
once for all. Nothing developed through lower into higher 
forms. Change meant only decay. Even Christian apologists 
sought to prove Christianity by showing it to be "as old as 
creation" and but a ''republication of the religion of nature." 

Where deism had not thus devitalized Christianity, a none 
the less abstract and static conception of revelation worked the 
same evil. Christianity, the Bible, and the Church were con- 
ceived of as having been, once for all, shot out of the supernal 
heights. Historical perspective was unknown. There was 
really no history, — only events, natural and supernatural. The 
past was studied in the spirit of ''the lawyer searching for a 
precedent, not that of the historian who resuscitates the whole 
spirit and force of a buried age," in order to understand his 
own age. This static conception of the eighteenth century was 
also applied to the reason. Reason was thus held to be of a 
certain definite magnitude, consisting always of the same fixed, 
clear conceptions. This abstract form then served as the 
standard for measuring the rationality of every kind of creed 
and institution. There was no conception of reason expanding 
and developing under the stimulus of subjective needs and 
changing environment. To-day, however, we always look for 
the various stages of the impulse to rationality, in different 
ages, climes, and cultures. Rationality is looked upon as an 
historical process of the inward impulse. It is not a fixed sum 
of innate ideas or categories. Hence progress and continuity. 



238 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

as well as constancy, are looked for as elements of reason. 
Again, the conception of reason as an abstract form, apart 
from concrete historical institutions, is abandoned to-day. 
Reason is rather the immanent formative form, present in early 
and late, in imperfect and temporay stages of state, church, 
literature, and social life. 

These, in their widely different forms, have represented 
the relatively rational for their respective times and problems, 
and have entered, in transmuted form, as elements into future 
stages of the same. Past forms of creed and cult are estimated 
by their own contemporary situations, problems, and solutions. 
The Saints and the Fathers, while not appealed to as authorities 
for us, are recognized as generally the actual and rational au- 
thorities for their own times,— the mouthpieces of the regnant 
Zeitgeist. We endeavor to think what Augustine and Luther 
thought, not that we may stop at their thought, but that we 
may take it up as an element in the rational whole of theo- 
logical speculation ; that we may enter into our Christian herit- 
age in order that we, like them, may transmit it, in richer form, 
to our descendants. This ''historic sense," however, is not yet 
the common possession of the clerical mind. An English 
clergyman, being asked his opinion of the Salvation Army, re- 
plied: ''Could any one imagine Jesus Christ as an officer of 
such a remarkable organization?'' To this it was aptly re- 
plied, that "a person could as easily imagine Jesus Christ as a 
Salvation Army officer, toiling in the slums of London, as he 
could imagine Him a Bishop or an Archbishop, with his five 
thousand or twenty-five thousand pounds a year, and a seat in 
the House of Lords." The historic sense enables one to 
imagine both of these positions, under different conditions. So, 
too, it enables one to trace the progress in Christian doctrine 
from the Sermon on the Mount, to and through the Nicene 
Creed, and to recognize the law of development, in all this post 
New Testament work. Cardinal Newman thought that if St. 
Athanasius or St. Ambrose should suddenly come to life in the 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY 239 

modern Oxford, either of them would find the true church in 
some small Roman chapel in a forlorn suburb, where mass was 
said, rather than in the ornate service of a stately English 
cathedral. To this it is replied, that if any saint of the early 
church should suddenly come to life, knowing nothing of the 
march of mind and social life in the interval, he might find 
himself more at home in some small chapel which has kept 
itself aloof from the main current of church life, and thus 
been left forlorn. But if any of the early Fathers had lived 
through all the great phases of life and thought since their 
day, as we can do, it is not conceivable that they would reject 
all the fruitage of these epochs, or refuse to enlarge and cor- 
rect their provincial views, any more than they would refuse 
to avail themselves of modern speech, science, and culture. 

With this historic sense, it is we who are the ancients, the 
possessors of the wisdom of all former ages of Christian 
thought. For us there has been a larger development of the 
rationality of Christian doctrine, a richer unfolding of the 
content of the Christian spirit. The rational in Christian 
thought for us of to-day means the organic sum total of the 
efiforts of the Christian spirit at self-realization. We have 
ample means to free ourselves from all provincial philistinism ; 
to purge out all merely subjective views by a large and free 
reading ourselves into the various points of view in the long 
course of historical development of Christian thought. We 
have the means of absorbing all that Christian tradition has to 
offer us, and to recognize the various stages of rationality thus 
presented. Only when we have thus made ourselves masters 
of what has gone before, have thought ourselves into the in- 
sights of the world's great seers, have thoroughly romanti- 
cized, and thus filled our empty selves with the concrete con- 
tent of historical development, can we attain to holding our 
large heritage in a free and independent manner. 

Let this conception of the modern historical view of ration- 
ality be applied to the sum total of Christian creeds, instead of 



240 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

the former abstract conception of reason, and we shall have a 
very different sort of estimate of creeds from that of vulgar 
rationalism. The whole question of conformity to the creedal 
expression of the historical Christian consciousness as a nine- 
teen-century-long organism will appear in a new light. We 
are, of course, only speaking of the conformity which concerns 
those who consider themselves the most enlightened and intel- 
lectual of their fellow-men, — of those who have been thor- 
oughly disillusioned as to the naive, unreflecting, and unques- 
tioning acceptance of the Christian heritage that the large part 
of Christendom gives. Such acceptance, indeed, forms a part 
of that of the most intellectual sort. Into the religious, as into 
the social and intellectual ethos of his community, has each 
individual been baptized and confirmed, — largely educated by 
it. But to the reflective spirit, the interpretation, the relative 
worth and emphasis, of the different parts will be different. 
First he will note that creeds cannot be abstracted from the 
whole context of the religious life and organism without losing 
their proper position and significance. Such abstraction is, 
indeed, necessary for this purpose of the scientific study of 
them as one part of the whole sphere. Then he will note that, 
when thus abstracted for this purpose, they have order, per- 
manence, development, and continuity, and that they are not 
to be taken en masse. Creed-making epochs will be studied in 
the sympathetic spirit of the historical method, and then in the 
critical comparative methods of subsequent epochs of reflec- 
tion. The thread of continuity will be held on to as he traces 
the development of the unspecified universal, the generic 
principle into its particular organic phases under the influence 
of varying needs and environments. Thus, much mere rub- 
bish will be cast aside, — chips from the block of marble grow- 
ing into the statue. The death of old forms will be noted as 
passing into the nascent forms of succeeding stages. 

"Music, when soft voices die. 
Vibrates in the memory; 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY 241 

Odors, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken." 

Then he will note the difference betv^een the oecumenical creeds 
of Christendom and the confessions of faith and systems of 
dogma in local branches of the church, and the constant rela- 
tion of the former to the changing content of the latter. In 
the latter, too, he will seek not merely a collection and classi- 
fication, but also a unification of them through the central or- 
ganic principle of Christianity. His historical and compara- 
tive study of them, as the ever changing result of men's intel- 
lectual effort to formulate their religious experience, will 
create the sympathetic spirit of appreciation of at least their 
results, though the end be not yet attained. He will then be 
prepared to reintegrate them into the whole concrete social 
organism of Christianity, as a great institution developing from 
''that holy thing" in the Virgin's womb, which was born into 
the complex of social and religious environment of the Grseco- 
Roman Empire ; passing through that of many races and ages 
since then, — ever changing, ever developing, and yet ever con- 
tinuous in its organic life. The place of tradition, the worth 
and necessity of the great insights of great Christian men and 
epochs, will be fully recognized, while he will decline to di- 
vorce any part of the whole past, or of the present, of Chris- 
tian creed from the central heart-principle of the Person of the 
founder of Christianity. 

The Personality of the Christ is the ultimate touchstone by 
which we must estimate all creeds. They shall not hide our 
Lord from us. So far as they reveal Him, they supply the 
criterion of their own worth and limitations. But it is this 
divine Personality throbbing through and animating them all, 
rather than as coming directly to each individual Christian, 
that is the touchstone. The whole fabric is a social organic 
one. The portrait of the Master is multiform, and yet must 
be unified by the historical method. We must place ourselves 
before the Johannine, the Petrine, the Pauline, the Patristic, 

16 



242 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

the Scholastic, and the Protestant portraits of our Lord, and 
recognize his Hneaments in them all ; get as it were a composite 
photograph on the historical canvas; which preserves and en- 
riches any private revelation to the soul, and furnishes the 
criteria for the estimate of all single portraits. All Christian 
schemes of doctrine are but diverging streams flowing from 
the one great fountain, going forth to water the earth. They 
represent the leaven of that One Life, leavening various por- 
tion of the lump. 

But Christ himself is greater than all his resulting mani- 
festations, greater than all these portraits, as He was greater 
than all Jewish Messianic conceptions in his fulfillment of 
them. In subscribing to any creed, we are only confessing 
Christ. Woe be to us if He be not greater than any one of our 
creeds. Woe be to us, also, if we fail to appreciate the revela- 
tion in all of them. But a greater woe upon us if we stand 
dogmatically before any one portrait of Christ and say, this is 
the only true and original one. No revelation of Christ comes 
directly to the individual, without the mediation of some form 
of sound doctrine and life. We are members one of another 
from the very beginning of the Christian commonwealth. 
Hence no creed is of merely private interpretation. It repre- 
sents the corporate Christian consciousness gradually taking 
explicit and developing form. The germ, the generic leaven, 
is the historical Christ of the New Testament. Starting from 
this norm, the historical method traces the unity and contin- 
uity in all the diverse forms of development and of creedal 
statement. Any development that results in the very opposite 
of its beginning, is abnormal and false; and any form that 
grows dogmatically rigid becomes lifeless and sterile. The 
historic Christ and all succeeding secular environments of the 
Christian life give the total of elements to be considered in 
testing the genuineness and worth of any creedal development. 
To-day it is only the new which is indissolubly and organically 
connected with the old, that is true in Christian doctrine. Other 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORmTY 243 

sort of rationality is beyond the pale of the genuine historical 
method. It is equally irrational to seek to stereotype Chris- 
tion thought according to the form of the first, the fourth, or 
the sixteenth century, or to seek to make a brand-new creed for 
the twentieth century. The old and the new can alone give us 
the true for to-day. Our minds must be both attached to and 
detached from bygone formulas. To esteem only our present 
provincial view as the truth, is as great and soul-destroying an 
error as to esteem a bygone view as ultimate. The deadliest 
of all heresies against reason is that which limits it to one age 
or one type of thought. What more absurd form of irrational- 
ity can be imagined to-day than that which modern orthodoxy 
till recently made as to creed subscription. Put in its naked 
form, the demand was this : Christianity is essentially doctrine. 
Here are the only ortho-dogmata. Each individual must yield 
unfeigned assent to their literal form from personal insight 
into their truth, all historical perspective aside. It thus has 
reverted to either scholastic fetters or to antinomian individ- 
ualism. In the latter and ultimate form of orthodoixy, it must 
result in the individual isolating himself from all ecclesiastical 
inclosures and making a new one for himself. 

The old Scotch woman doubted of the orthodoxy of all 
except herself and her Donald, and sometimes, she said, she 
doubted if even Donald was quite orthodox. The whole 
method of the appeal to the individual assent to the literal form 
of untransmuted provincial confessions of faith is false and 
vicious. It does not commend itself to the historical spirit of 
the day as healthy or normal. It has had its day, and is reap- 
ing its natural harvest of dissent and heterodoxy and wholesale 
agnosticism. Its creed stringency produced, first, thought- 
strangulation, and then lawless free-thinking, divorced from all 
historical continuity with the Christian heritage of eighteen 
centuries. Its rationalism is no longer rational. Its modern 
strait- jacket confessions of faith can no longer be laid upon 
the back of recalcitrant Christians. There is not to-day a 



244 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

single modern ''Platform/' ''Confession of Faith/' or "Thirty- 
nine Articles of Religion/' that commands the literal allegiance 
formerly demanded. The requiring such literal assent to 
novel and provincial formularies as a condition of church mem- 
bership, is a modern barbarism that seems to be nearly out- 
grown. The modern scholasticism of Protestantism is causing 
a revolt as profound as that of the Reformation. The critical, 
comparative, and historical methods are all against it. In 
place of this we have either the utter dissidence of dissent, or 
the return to the concrete social view of Christianity, in which 
creeds take their place in Christian worship and education. 

The church is far more and other than creeds and articles. 
It is the home of the life-long spiritual culture of its members. 
It indoctrinates them only as the family does its members. 
The one who has passed through this pedagogical process, and 
comes to reflect upon it, can never do so in the abstract way 
demanded by merely external criticism. 

He reflects on nothing in isolation. He reflects not merely 
upon the creeds, but upon the whole spiritual ethos in which he 
has been educated. More than this, he reflects upon the whole 
ethos of historical Christianity, and only upon the creeds as part 
of this concrete process. He thinks through all that can be 
said against creeds, and knows the historical and psychological 
conditions of their genesis, their limitations, their worth, and 
their necessity. He thus becomes a relatively universalized in- 
dividual; a Christian who has lived through and thought 
through all the growth of creeds in their context of Christian 
life, and thus assents to them in the name of the church uni- 
versal. "I, John , do hereby, with my whole nineteen- 

century-long history and thought, yield unfeigned assent to 
the result of this history and thought, as embodied in the his- 
torical creed now before me.^^ 

Something like this is the formula in which the modern 
category of rationality puts creed-conformity for us. It would 
reverse Emerson's apothegm : "Whoso would be a man must be 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY 245 

a non-conformist/' or, at least, supplant it by some of Emer- 
son's own more genial expressions, such as 

"All are needed by each one; 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 

Whoso would be a man must be a conformist.^ Unchar- 
tered freedom not only tires, but it also dehumanizes. And 
yet the conformity must be to something universal, historical, 
and rational, and not to any provincial form, either novel or 
antique. Nor can it be literal conformity to an inflexible 
creed, asking a man to bind himself never to grow. Develop- 
ment from oecumenical statements of the faith is the least that 
can be demanded. And the historical estimate of modern con- 
fessions of faith gives them this elastic and roomy character, 
in place of the strait- jacket sort of use formerly made of them. 
De-Calvinizing Calvinism by Calvinists is the patent process 
before our eyes to-day. Bend or break is its only alternative. 
It is bending, and the historical method justifies and assists in 
the bending process. In its naked and literal form it is repel- 
lent enough, but many are wise to still ''like it," while they are 
reforming it. History is making its weight felt against mere 
dicta of Luther, Calvin, and Armenius, as well as against the 
dicta of the older Fathers. Their systems of theology are fast 
becoming chiefly significant as historical monuments, records 
of past interpretations of the ever-expanding revelation of the 
fullness of Christ, witnesses of the historical limitations of the 
ages which gave them birth. This historical appreciation of 
their worth and their limitations, is the assent which we yield 
to them, in accepting them as part of that Christian heritage, 
which we dare not wrap up in a napkin or preserve as a mum- 
mified fetich. We thus express our deep reverence for the 
lively faith of our fathers, enshrined in these venerable monu- 
ments of religious insight and theological attainments. We 
assent to them in their place in the history of Christian doc- 
trine, as containing much truth, and telling us much about 
'Cf. Chap. I. 



246 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Christ. The vicarious element, which must belong to all mem- 
bers of any body, enters into all this preservation of formulas 
of our fathers' and our brethren's faith. 

We dare not, we cannot, rationally attempt to make brand- 
new, unhistorical formulas for ourselves. We are members 
one of another, — old and young, first, fourth, sixteenth and 
twentieth centuries, — we are all one body in Christ, and from 
all utterances of this age-long body goes up to heaven one har- 
monious anthem of reverence and love to our common Lord 
and Master. Many dialects, but one language; many forms, 
but one spirit ; many portraits, but one Christ. Mere intellect- 
ual agreement as to form of statement becomes of less conse- 
quence as we become better educated. A healthier and more 
humane attitude towards all temporary and partial statements 
of the unstatable is the slowly coming but proper result of that 
historical spirit that finds nothing human alien to itself. Rec- 
ognition of our indebtedness for our present culture, to our 
nurture in opinions which we have outgrown, tempers our re- 
action against them, and leads us to honor our fathers in the 
faith when we ourselves have become fathers. We have a 
thoroughly rational, that is, historical conception of the true 
worth and authority of creeds. We are not fetich-worshipers, 
nor are we iconoclasts. We know the history of all "confes- 
sions of faith," every word of some of them molten in the fire 
of controversy, hastily dispatched from a battlefield, or forged 
as the heated manifesto of a victorious faction. We know the 
proper place of doctrine in the concrete complex of Christian- 
ity, of which larger life it is an imperfect intellectual abstract. 
We know the limitless field these limiting statements have to 
deal with, and the limited capacity of human conception and 
language, — to-day as well as yesterday. We know the worth 
of symbolism, of poetry, and anthem. We know that all 
things vital grow, and that change and decay are parts of vital 
development. We know, too, the historical and the ethical 
heart of all creeds, the ''Alpha and Omega," "the desire of 



ETHICS OF CREED CONFORMITY 247 

nations/' the ideal man, the spiritual Christ, the axis and the 
goal of the world's history. To this we assent under all tradi- 
tional form of sound words as they have been the divine media 
for revealing it to us. 

We appreciate and care, too, for the historic development 
of this central heart of all faith in form of sound words. We 
dare not discard them for ourselves and our children. We 
hold them in deepest human reverence, though we must con- 
fess that when we measure the bones of the giants of the 
Fathers of old, we find them no larger than our own, begotten 
by them. We find, in a word, that creedal conformity is our 
bounden duty, and a wholesome service as members of the most 
truly human and most truly divine form of institutional life 
that has educated us into our present Christian freedom and 
manhood. In all that w^e have said thus far, we have referred 
chiefly to the modern Protestant forms of confessions of faith, 
rather than to the oecumenical creeds, which have been, as Dr. 
Schaff says, ''the common property of all churches," or to the 
Nicene Creed, which the Declaration of the American House 
of Bishops and the Anglican Lambeth Conference have de- 
clared to be "a sufficient statement of Christian doctrine,'' in 
the unification of Christendom. 

The historical vindication of this time-honored universal 
creed, shows it as ''the form of sound words," which can from 
many doctrinal distresses free us, and afford the basis for 
building all subsequent theological opinions into a scientific 
theology. We believe that it can be demonstrated to be ra- 
tional for us to hold "the Nicene Creed to be a sufficient state- 
ment of doctrine," and an ultimate statement of doctrine, so 
far as it met and answered the then opposing world- views ; that 
we can rationally conform to any environing "confession of 
faith" or "articles of religion," subject to this oecumenical and 
rational creed, as the scientific development, so far as it goes, 
of the historical norm of faith in the Holy Scriptures. All the 
historical conditions of its formation, — an undivided Chris- 



248 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

tendom, special philosophical culture, meeting the most pro- 
found opposing world-views, profound reservation from mi- 
nute deductions and definitions, — its rising like a lofty peak 
above all the fogs and din of lower battlefields, its venerable 
antiquity, expressive of the deepest and of the most enduring 
Christian consciousness, all this, and much more, make it to be 
the one symbol, the one sacred hieroglyph, to which a philos- 
ophy of history demands loyal assent from every rational 
Christian. The whole of the ethics of creed conformity ulti- 
mately comes to a vindication of the historical rationality of 
this monumental symbol of the Christian faith, as a ''Franchise 
of Freedom and a Charter of Comprehension," though forged 
in the midst of such tumult, violence, and trickery as would 
disgrace any modern ecclesiastical council. But the modern 
superstitious notion of the infallibility of even oecumenical 
councils was not then thought of. Its worth is purely in- 
trinsic. Its heart is the doctrine of the Incarnation; of the 
perfect manhood and full Godhead of Jesus Christ. It defines 
only negatively against great errors. It is utterly free from 
interpretations and theories as to the method of creation, of 
inspiration, of human salvation, of sacramental grace, of the 
future life; and thus levels the huge mountains of theological 
theories that have served to divide portions of the Lord's vine- 
yard, and to perplex, dishearten, and render skeptical so many 
sons of God. This, and very much more, should be said about 
the Nicene formula as the genial and genuine ''Formula Con- 
cordice/^ the liberator of the perplexed conscience and the 
doubting intellect of Christendom to-day. We believe that a 
full and candid historical study of the Nicene Symbol will 
prove it to be the larger and more constitutional form of state- 
ment needed to-day, — an intrinsically valuable and valid gift 
of a genuine creed-making epoch to all subsequent dogma- 
ridden ages. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GROUND OF CERTITUDE IN RELIGION^ 

Part I. — Reason and Authority in Religion 

'Tather, don't you know that we left that word 'must' be- 
hind when we came to this new country ?" This was Patrick's 
reply to a priest, who said that he must take his children from 
the public school and must send them to the parish school. 
This fairly represents the uttered, or concealed, reply of the 
mass of thinking men in the modern world, to any presentation 
of the old authorities, when prescribed without further ground 
than an uncriticised imperative. 

We have left behind the must of an infallible Church, of an 
infallible Bible, and of an infallible reason. Each one of these 
in turn has been abstracted from an organic process, and pro- 
posed as the authoritative basis of belief. The inadequacy o£ 
the proof for such infallibility has rendered this claim of each 
one of no effect. The abstract reason, which was first used to 
discredit the other two, has fallen into the pit which itself 
digged, and de profundis rise its agnostic moans. Hence the 
task laid upon us in these days is that of inquiring whether these 
old musts do not have a real authority, other and more ethical 
than the one rightfully denied ; to see whether they do not have 
a natural and essential authority that rational men must accept 
in order to be rational. 

A criticism which is merely negative is both irrational and 
unhuman. The function of criticism is to be the dynamic, 

^ This chapter is taken from a volume now nearly out of print, i. e.^ 
Reason and Authority in Religion, published by T. Whittaker, New York. 

249 



250 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

forcing on from one static phase of belief and institution to 
another ; to destroy only by conserving in higher fulfilled form. 
Its aim can only be to restore as reason what it first seeks to 
destroy as the unreason of mere might ; to restore as essential 
realized freedom what it momentarily rejects as external neces- 
sity. Such work involves a thorough reformation of the whole 
edifice of dogma and institution, a thorough reappreciation of 
the genuine worth of these works of the human spirit under 
divine guidance. 

Such a task implies an ideal of knowledge vastly diflferent 
from that of ordinary rationalism. That holds an abstract sub- 
jective conception of truth, imagined under the form of mathe- 
matical equality or identity. This method, on the contrary, 
simply undertakes to understand what is, or concrete experi- 
ence, under the conception of organic development in historic 
process. It can attempt no demonstration of the organic proc- 
ess of religion by anything external to it. It seeks only to give 
an intelligent description of the process. The process itself 
gives the conception of its rationality. It declines to abstract 
any part of the process, or to seize any one of its static moments 
and make that the measure or the proof of the whole, as ordi- 
nary apologetics attempt to do. The real history of religion, 
then, like the real history of any organism in nature, is its 
true rationality and vindication. 

The reason appealed to, also, is that which manifests itself 
in the corporate process, and not in the individual member. A 
religious individual is an abstraction. The truth is the whole 
concrete historical institution of which he is a member. Only 
as he experiences or mirrors the various stages of this organic 
life, can he understand or express the rationality of religion. 
His certitude rests upon authority, which he, as autonomic, must 
finally impose upon himself. Objective rationality can only 
thus become subjective and afford real grounds of certitude. 
Such a method of acquiring rational certitude may not satisfy 
those whose ideal of knowledge is that of ordinary rationalism. 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 251 

But have we not vainly tried to satisfy such an ideal long 
enough? Has not the century and a half of ''the age of rea- 
son" landed us in agnosticism, from which it cannot extricate 
us ? Are we not ready to abandon the attempt of such rational- 
ism and try the higher method? This method consists in an 
historical and a philosophical study of religion. 

The historical inquiry should first enable us to see the value 
of Bible and Church as records and aids of the religious life 
of the past. The philosophic inquiry should then enable us to 
see their necessity and worth to the religious life of our times. 
Neither of these methods is so irrational as to dare to sectarian- 
ize our religious life from that of the past. Both see this life 
as a continuous process, and only seek to understand and inter- 
pret what has been, as an aid to what should be. Neither of 
them are individualistic. 

The whole swing of the pendulum of thought to-day is 
away from the individual, and towards the social, point of view. 
Theories of society are supplanting theories of the individual. 
The solidarity of man is the regnant thought in both the scien- 
tific and the historical study of man. It is even running into 
the extreme of a determinism that annihilates the individual. 
Both theology and ecclesiasticism have passed through this ex- 
treme, which we may call the Chinese phase of belief and life. 
The Protestant world is slow to yield to the Zeitgeist heralding 
a retreat from individualism to socialism, dreading a repetition 
of its tyranny. But the swing of the pendulum has also be- 
gun in these spheres. ''Martyrs of disgust" may be the loudest 
and foremost fuglemen in the retreat. But this does not pre- 
vent the heralds of concrete reason from advancing backward 
to reclaim their neglected heritage. The institution and the 
creed of the whole are being seen to have a rational authority 
that must be recognized. Society is seen to be the obligatory 
theatre for the realization of freedom. Its authority is seen to 
be that of order and harmony of individual minds and wills. 
No Church no Christian, no oecumenical creed no right belief. 



k 



252 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

But Church and Creed are already old. We cannot manu- 
facture totally new ones. Nor can we accept the old forms at 
their old worth, as fetters of thought and action. We have 
outgrown that form of their authority, as the child outgrows 
the paternal authority. So we think. But the analogy is not 
perfect. Besides, the authority of the father as that of a 
full-grown man, which develops the powers of the child, is 
never fully shaken off. Nor does the individual member of a 
community ever outgrow the larger wisdom of the whole. 

The danger of a weak romanticizing; of pathetically pes- 
simistic distrust of reason causing an uncritical acceptance of 
all the old bonds, should not deter us from seeking a rationale 
of them that will compel an ethical submission to their rightful 
authority. But it should put us on our guard against humor- 
ing a weak phase of the human spirit, which comes when its 
wings droop from we;ariness, so that a plunge into the ocean 
beneath seems relief. It should also put us on our guard lest 
the oncoming of this social view be permitted to take an ab- 
stract form, and thus crush out the might and right of person- 
ality. We should be alert to carry with us all the hard-won 
fruits of Protestantism. The danger is that we may find our- 
selves slaves again. 

The two phases of authority for which Apologetics ordina- 
rily contends are the intellectual and the practical. The first 
is that of creed or orthodoxy, the other is that of institution or 
Church. Till recently the burden of Apologetics has been 
the maintenance of orthodoxy, which has largely meant Calvin- 
ism, founded upon an unhistorical interpretation of an assumed 
infallible Bible. Such Apologetics has had its day. It has al- 
most destroyed both orthodoxy and the Bible. 

The other phase of Apologetics now claims to be heard. It 
claims to include the task of the former phase. The Church, 
as the author of the creed and the Bible, proposes to vindicate 
them as parts of its process — as its own offspring — in vindicat- 
ing itself as the practical embodiment and promoter of Chris- 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 253 

tianity. We need scarcely disclaim any sympathy with this 
phase as represented by Romanist and High-Anglican. The 
common method of both is arbitrary, abstract, unhistorical, dog- 
matic and unconvincing. It is the "must'' which Patrick left 
behind in the old country. But Patrick never leaves his patri- 
otism behind. He has a double sort of patriotism for both his 
old and his new country. He is unreflectingly wiser and more 
concrete than the abstract rationalist who owns "no tribe, nor 
state, nor home," nor content, except what he makes for him- 
self. Nor can we leave the Church behind. It has helped 
make us what we are. The rational form of this method, 
then, commands sympathy. It should include a historical and 
psychological study of the institution, in order to arrive at 
a philosophical vindication of its rational authority over indi- 
viduals, as constitutive of their essential well-being. This 
affords a relative vindication of the various phases, and an ab- 
solute vindication of the whole process and its results. The 
end justifies the means ; is immanent in and constitutive of these. 
But this process and result are in and through the community. 
The Church is Christianity. Its ground of certitude and au- 
thority is in the whole. It is in the light of this general concep- 
tion of an organic social process, that we must seek for the 
ground of certitude in both subjective and objective religion. 

Certitude is conviction resting on discernment, as a con- 
stant element in all the activity of our mental and spiritual fac- 
ulties. The certitude resting on authority or on testimony, 
really rests on a discernment of their reasonableness. Thus 
certitude is personal. It is the yea and amen of private judg- 
ment. It comes from the manifestation of the truth by God 
through media. In the case of religious certitude, the inclusive 
medium is the Church. But no doctrine of the Church as an 
organism that denies the right and duty of private judgment 
can remain an ethical one. Protestantism has bought this at 
too great a price to be bartered away. It is only as against an 
abstract individualism that ignores the patent fact, that one 



254 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

is what he is by virtue of the social tissue in which he Hves, that 
there is need of reasserting the authority of this constitutive 
environment. But this must be an ethical organism, inclusive 
of, and living only in and through its individual members. It 
is just as true that the Church exists in and through its indi- 
vidual members, as it is that they exist in and through the 
Church. It is a kingdom of persons where all are kings, be- 
cause all are persons, and not an abstract external authority. 
It is an organism of organisms, a person of persons, a Holy 
Spirit that only lives and realizes itself on earth through per- 
sonal members. This much is said here, to guard against any 
suspicion of reverting to the abstract conception of the au- 
thority of the Church as a ground of certitude, which was "the 
infinite falsehood'' of mediaeval ecclesiasticism. 

I have used the singular, ground, instead of the plural, 
grounds, because what we wish is a vital organic universal, in- 
stead of a number of abstract particulars. ''To be confined 
within the range of mere grounds, is the position and principle 
characterizing the sophists.'' This species of accidental, arbi- 
trary, special-pleading reasoning; this giving a pro for every 
con; this age of reason (of grounds) in Apologetics, had full 
sweep in the eighteenth century and far enough into the nine- 
teenth to be responsible for much of the prevalent scepticism. 

To-day, the ordinary grounds or proofs of our religion are 
justly called in question, and we are asking for a fundamental 
universal ground (an Urgrund) of them all — prophecy, mira- 
cle, the incarnation, the Bible, the Church, and reason — for 
the authority of all these authorities. 

This Urgrund must be an organic first principle which 
unfolds into a philosophy of religion as the only final and satis- 
factory Apologetic for Christianity ; a first principle which vin- 
dicates religion as a genuine and necessary factor in the life of 
man, and Christianity as the fruition of all religion. Resting 
either in the simple faith of childhood ; or on abstract external 
evidences ; or yielding blindly to external authority by arbitrary 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 255 

wilful repression of thought, as did the late Cardinal New- 
man : none of these methods are possible to-day. Mere dogma 
and mere external evidences and authority are no antidote to 
doubt, no grounds of certitude in our day. 

It is needless to multiply words in describing the patent 
phase of current religious thought. It is, in brief, one of 
unrest and doubt, and yet also one of faith and reconstruction. 
It is attempting the necessary feat of swallowing and digesting 
its own offspring of doubts. It is on its way to an Urgrund 
which cannot be something outside of itself. This can be 
nothing but the generic principle which, as constitutive and 
organic, is implicit throughout its whole process. At best 
there can be but an approximate comprehension of this imma- 
nent life-principle. But it is the task which the thoughtful 
human spirit feels as a categorical imperative. There is an 
underlying faith or certitude, even in those phases where nega- 
tive results are most conspicuous. There is an everlasting yea 
beneath doubt, which alone renders doubt possible. 

Religion is acknowledged to be one of the great human 
universals, co-extensive with man's history, and as varied in 
form as his culture. It is truly and essentially human. It is a 
necessary part of humanity's life. No religion, imperfect man. 
Organizations may decay and theologies crumble, but the re- 
ligious spirit lives on through and above these changes, mak- 
ing for itself ever more congenial and adequate manifestations 
and organs of its perennial life — rising on stepping stones of its 
petrified forms to higher ones. With art and philosophy it 
forms the triad of man's relations with the Absolute Spirit. In 
these three inter-related and mutually sustaining spheres is ex- 
hibited the perfection of his spiritual character and functions. 
The creative object, the ultimate and constitutive ground of 
them all, is God. 

What is religion? A descriptive definition of the totality 
of phenomena which constitutes religion would be too extensive. 
So too would be a mere enumeration of the definitions of it that 



2^6 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

have been proposed. But most of such definitions have a com- 
mon heart, and proceed from a varied reflection of a common 
truth. ReHgion is at least a conscious reverential relation of 
man to God. It may be ''morality tinged with emotion/' but 
that emotion must come from impact of the soul with God. It 
is a spiritual activity of self-relation to the great 'Tower not 
ourselves," through feeling, thought and will. It is a striving 
to fall upward from the mere physical side of our life. But this 
implies — and implies as its essential presupposition — ^the falling 
down, the self-relation of this Power to man. We must there- 
fore define religion as the reciprocal relation or communion of 
God and man. 

These two sides of this organic process may be termed ( i ) 
Revelation, (2) Faith. That is, the self-relation of God to man 
constitutes the conception of revelation ; the self-relation of man 
to God constitutes that of faith. The two elements are correla- 
tive, though that of God's activity is both chronologically and 
logically primal, and evocative of the other. Thus religion rests 
upon a universal. It is not merely subjective. We cannot ab- 
stract faith from revelation. For it is only both together that 
give us the concrete content of religion. 

(i). Revelation is the moment of divine self-showing in 
the organic process which constitutes religion. As the self-re- 
lation of God to man, it is a primal and perennial act, which, 
in religion, is recognized as a phase of one's own personal ex- 
perience. As immediate, it forms the background of all human 
life — sentient, mental and moral. It forms the ^w/?ra-nature 
of humanity, and is creative of it. Back of, beneath, immanent 
in (fierd) all that is human, there is that which constitutes and 
sustains it. This metaphysics of man, mental and moral, is the 
immanent, immediate relation of God to humanity. But the 
term is generally confined to what we may call mediated revela- 
tion. God's self-relation to us is continually mediated and 
brought to our consciousness through our physical, mental, 
moral and social relations. He is immanent in these relations, 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 257 

and thus reveals himself to our conscious experience. It is 
through our knowledge of nature, through our knowledge and 
love of our brethren — that is, through our knowledge of the 
physical and moral world-order — that we become conscious of 
God's relation to us. Signs and tokens and mighty works, 
Bible and Church, family and social life, have all been used as 
media of this revelation. Revelation, however mediated, consti- 
tutes the objective side of religion. 

(2). Faith is the subjective side. It is man's conscious 
apprehension of God thus related to him through revelation. 
It embraces all the constituent elements of the human side of re- 
ligion — the apprehension of the Godward side of all that we do 
or say or think. Faith is faith. This tautological definition is 
compulsory, from the nature of the activity. It is a primal, 
basal activity of the human spirit. It is the simplest, and yet 
may be the most complex, activity of conscious man. It has no 
special organ and is no special faculty, but is the dynamic in all 
our faculties. It contains elements of feeling, thinking and will- 
ing, because it is the actus purus prevenient and cooperating 
with all these faculties. It is the spirit's apprehension of re- 
alities through these faculties. It is its practical self-conscious- 
ness of the Absolute. It is the self practically conscious of it- 
self, in its relation with God. Thus it is only another name for 
the highest phase of self-consciousness. 

Such self-consciousness is never merely subjective. Its 
contents are the results of the mediation of all its physical, social 
and religious environment and training, and ultimately of God, 
through these media. Religious faith — and specifically Chris- 
tian faith — is God's children's cry of Abba, Father. It is their 
apprehension of their divine sonship, the responsive thrill of 
emotion awakened by the consciousness of God's paternal rela- 
tion to them. Abraham's faith was his consciousness of friend- 
ship with God. Our faith is our consciousness of divine son- 
ship through his eternal Son, Jesus Christ. Such Christian 
faith is a very profound and simple, and yet a most complex 

17 



258 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

stage of self-consciousness. It involves the mediation of a 
Christian education, which implies that of nineteen centuries of 
the Church's life. Thus, while our faith is subjective and per- 
sonal, it is only so because we have been educated into the con- 
scious possession of the Christian heritage of centuries. Our 
personal subjective faith itself, as well as objective faith, is 
grounded upon and mediated for us through institutional Chris- 
tianity. 

Thus the objective ground of religion is God, and the sub- 
jective ground faith — or the simple apprehension, through more 
or less media, of this relation — thus converting the whole into 
the process of reciprocal relations between God and man, which 
constitute religion. 

It will not do to substitute for God "the Powder not our- 
selves,'' Law, Force, Substance, or any ^w&-personal category. 
And the non-personal is always sub-ptrsonsl. It may be ac- 
knowledged that some scientific conceptions of law, order, na- 
ture, cosmos, are higher in one sense than some anthropomorphic 
conceptions of God, but they are never supra-personBl, and can 
never afford the conscious relation we call religion. Our analy- 
sis of the content of consciousness can only arbitrarily stop short 
of that of self-consciousness, or self-determined totality. 

If the charge is made that our conception of the first principle 
as personal is merely subjective — the imaginative reflection of 
our own mind upon phenomena — it may at least be met by the 
counter-charge of the same subjectivism in scientific concep- 
tions. Matter, law, force, are equally subjective measurements 
of the objective by the subjective. But this argumentum ad 
hominem is only a side thrust of thought on its way through 
and above all such imperfect conceptions of the first principle. 
All sujch conceptions are implicitly religious. They imply as 
their ground the full conception of God. Hence the scientist 
is sane only as he becomes devout. But this criticism of the 
categories of ordinary science, making explicit its real ground, 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 259 

is the work of philosophy proper. It is the needed corrective 
of scientific agnosticism. 

Such a criticism of the categories of thought reaches a sys- 
tem of categories, with God as the impHcit and the ultimate one. 
Religion grasps this without reflection. Philosophy has nothing 
further to do than to point out the necessity and rationality of 
the human spirit reaching and resting in communion with this 
personal First Principle or Urgrimd. The Incarnation, as the 
perfect realization of this bond between God and man, and the 
extension of the Incarnation in history, are the essential media 
of both present religious and philosophical apprehension of this 
generic Urgrund, In neither case is it reached directly or in- 
tuitively. 

Religion, then, as a part of man's consciousness, has its ulti- 
mate ground in the eternal and loving reason of the First Prin- 
ciple of all things. Faith itself, or the subjective side, is neces- 
sarily reduced to the action of the Divine Spirit in man. The 
consciousness of this actual vital relation, or reciprocal bond be- 
tween God and man, is a primal and perennial fact, and the ulti- 
mate ground of religious certitude. Consciousness in man is 
implicitly a knowing of self with God (con-scius) , and hence of 
knowing God in knowing self. This is the real significance of 
the ontological proof of the existence of God. 

This bond is as real a relation as the causal relation. In- 
deed, it is often identified with this relation. Our heredity is 
from God, even though it be through lower forms of life, and 
our goal is also God, even though it be through imperfect man- 
hood. The ground of religion we find, then, to be nothing ex- 
trinsic. It does not need a special handle in the way of external 
reasons. It is not founded upon nor sustained by the various 
alleged proofs. These may vary and pass away, but the activity 
continues as a necessary function of normal humanity. Re- 
ligion will be found at the grave as well as at the cradle of man, 
because God is the immanent and transcendent essence of man.^ 
^ "As the personality of man has its foundation in the personality of 



26o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

God is the ultimate metaphysics of man, physical, mental 
and spiritual ; the real substance ; the continuously creative and 
sustaining power in His offspring. The Benedicite is the spon- 
taneous expression of the whole groaning and rejoicing crea- 
tion. If men should be so insensate as not to worship, "the 
stones would immediately cry out" an anthem of praise. The 
Psalmist's exclamation, ''Thou hast beset me behind and before; 
.... Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb," voices the 
consciousness of this ultimate metaphysics of all things physical. 
This Urgrund is creatively present before consciousness comes 
to raise the new-born man above the brutes. It begets religion 
as soon as consciousness of this power, in however low a form, 
appears, binding man back to (re-ligare) or causing him to 
review (re-legere) the fact of this primal relation. This con- 
sciousness varies in degree, strength, form and clearness of con- 
tent. But it is the ground of the various grounds that we can 
offer as causal of this, which is itself the cause of them. Proph- 
ecy and miracle, the Bible, Church and reason also, are all its 
offspring, and authenticated by it, rather than the reverse. 

But it is impossible that this fundamental fact of conscious- 
ness could be perfect at once. Religion, individual and racial, 
has a history. It begins as an immediate, indefinite apprehen- 
sion of the relation in the subjective consciousness, but it ex- 
pands and wins definite content with the growth of human con- 
sciousness in all spheres of experience. Thus subjective re- 
ligion expands with new revelation and apprehension of it into 
objective forms of creed, cult and institution, which in turn 
educe and strengthen it. The same spontaneous consciousness 
of "the Power not ourselves" that led the childhood of the race 
to personify earth and sky, also led Plato and Clement and 
Hegel, through the mediation of Greek and Christian culture, 
to proclaim the essential and perennial kinship of man with God, 
in all the concrete experience of his life and institutions. 

God, so the realization of personality brings man always nearer to 
God."-— Mulford's Republic of God, p. 28. 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 261 

There is more than an analogy, there is a real kinship be- 
tween the psychological and objective development in the in- 
dividual and the race. So we may trace a common outline for 
both. Indeed its development in the individual is only ren- 
dered possible through connection with a communal life. It is 
only by a false abstraction that the religion of the individual can 
be considered separately. Here as elsewhere the universal is 
prior to, and constitutive of, the individual. But this is not an 
abstract universal. It is the concrete organism of which he is 
a vital member. 

One can say I believe {credo) only by first having joined 
with others in saying ''we believe" (Trto-revo/Acv). The / always 
implies the we. It equals to-day the socialized and Chris- 
tianized man of the twentieth century. I believe, because they 
— nineteen centuries of Christian kinsmen — have believed ; and 
because we, the Universal Church, believe. Still, the subjec- 
tive factor is central, and our socialized faith is personal com- 
munion with God. The individual has absorbed, and has been 
realized, not annihilated by, the universal. Religion remains 
to the end a personal relation to a Person, however much it has 
been nourished and quickened by the community. "1 believe" 
now means the subjective personal self-affirmation, *'the ever- 
lasting yea" of our Christianized consciousness. 

But what do / believe ? What is the definite content of the 
religious relation of the individual with God ? 

I believe the consense of the Christian consciousness in re- 
gard to God, man and the world. I believe ''The Catholic 
Faith." We are far beyond the faith of childhood, of primitive 
man. The historic process of revelation and faith has rendered 
primitive immediate faith impossible and irrational. Both the 
act and the content have been endlessly mediated for us. Our 
consciousness of God has been enriched by that of a host of 
heroes of the faith, and by the cult and dogma of centuries of 
Christendom. Questions have been asked and answered for us 
before we were born. We have been born into the heritage of 



262 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

these answered questions in the shape of the oecumenical creeds, 
though enough open questions still remain to make us heroes 
of faith, and our generation an age of faith. 

But / believe. This heritage of the Christian faith is mine, 
only by the subjective personal activity of appropriation and 
realization. The Creeds are the records of a series of deep in- 
sights into the content of the Christian consciousness. The 
mastery of these is an ascent of the individual into the universal ; 
something that cannot be ours by mere rote-learning, but only 
as we think over, verify, re-create or experience anew within 
ourselves. Subjective faith remains the most important element 
of our spiritual life. We cannot be merely passive recipients 
of the most opulent heritage. And yet the universal, the objec- 
tive, rightly claims its place. We see this, also, when we ask 
further : 

Why do I believe the Catholic faith ? What renders it pos- 
sible for me to make this my own personal faith? Why does 
my faith, my consciousness of relation with God, have this defi- 
nite form and content? This form of faith, though personal, 
is not an immediate consciousness — a primitive unmediated rev- 
elation of God. It is not a matter of mere individual feeling 
or intuition. The why can only be answered by reading the 
whole history of his development, through the interaction of 
subjectivism and objectivism, of the self and its environment. 
A fair analysis of this process* likewise leads back to God as its 
ultimate ground. The psychological and historical lead back 
to this metaphysical Urgrund, This stage of what we call 
Christian nurture is an indispensable phase in the development 
of both strength and definiteness of faith. It is here that the 
rationality of authoritative catechetical Church teaching and 
Christian influence of family and community are to be justified. 

It is chiefly in this what and why of religion that we meet 
with grounds that seem to be extrinsic and accidental. The 
task, then, is to translate these grounds into rationality ; to dis- 
cover their place, that renders them necessary and rational ele- 



REASON AND AUTHORITY IN RELIGION 263 

ments of the organic process of the relation of God and man. 
This task includes the psychological study of the development 
of man in the social organism, and the historical study of the 
development of the social organism itself, and the reflective 
thought on the way back to the ultimate or metaphysical ground. 

The faith, though once delivered, could never, from the con- 
dition of the case, even in Christianity, be ^'once for all deliv-^ 
ered" to the individual or the community. This has had, is 
having, and will have a psychological history in both. Faith 
as an activity is forever the same, but its content, and the inter- 
pretation of this content, vary and develop with new conditions 
and culture. The life-giving Spirit inspires to some new form 
of practical religion, to meet new issues. The type of Christi- 
anity changes. Then the intellectual seers note this life, and 
modify the old theology so as to include it. 

The question then is, whether the environment leading to 
change of both vital and creedal form of Christianity can be 
justified; whether, in theological language, we can see the 
hand of Providence ; or, in the language of philosophy, whether 
we can discern the immanent logic or reason thus objectifying 
itself in rational forms ? Or, if we restrict creedal form to the 
oecumenical symbols, and the normal ecclesiastical form to that 
of the primitive Church, the question is whether we can discern 
the rationality in the culture of Greece and Rome as well as in 
that of Judea, which makes ''them legitimate ingredients in a 
catholic, complete Christianity." Can we, in other words, reach 
a philosophy of religion that justifies the multiform develop- 
ment of the two inseparable elements of religion — revelation 
and faith ; God's seeking and man's finding ; God's adhesion to 
man and man s adhesion to God ? Such a philosophy of re- 
ligion must be based upon a philosophy of history which must 
be simply a rational comprehension of empirical history. We 
thus indicate a work far beyond the limits of this present essay. 
We can do no more than note briefly the psychological forms 
through which religion passes in racial and individual experi- 



264 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

ence, catching glimpses of the immanent rationahty in the whole 
process. ' 

Part II. — The Psychological Forms of Religion 

We designate these three forms as (i) that of Feeling, (2) 
that of Knowing in its three phases of (a) conception, (b) re- 
fiectiomnd (c) comprehension, 3,nd (3) that of Willing, 

These are inseparable parts of consciousness, that we can 
only artificially separate for purpose of study. The universal 
element of thinking is more or less present in the particular ele- 
ment of feeling; and willing fuses them both into the concrete 
individuality of person or epoch. But in different ages and per- 
sons, and in the same person at different times, one or the other 
of these phases is more emphasized than the others. Hence 
religion varies in its psychological form. 

( I ) . Religion as Feeling, — Religion exists primarily in the 
form of feeling. Its genesis belongs to the primitive depths in 
which the soul is just distinguishing itself from the great not- 
self about it. It is the first coming into consciousness of the 
pre-conscious fact that everyone is born of God. And this feel- 
ing is generally mediated by some religious instruction. The 
power behind and before is first felt, rather than known. This 
gives the sense of dependence, which always remains an integral 
part of religion. It may run through the gamut of reverence, 
fear, dismay and terror, or devil-worship. Or this power may 
be felt as a congenial and beneficent one, and the feeling run 
through the gamut of reverence, confidence, love, peace and 
ecstasy, or mysticism. Fear and confidence are the two marked 
elements in this phase of religion. There is no lack of certitude 
in it. The unreasoned certitude of feeling hallows any object, 
from a log of wood to the sky, from a Jupiter to a Jehovah. 
The fetich-worshiper has as much certitude as a Mariolater. 
All religions alike afford this certitude to their worshipers. 

Historical illustrations of religions and of individuals in 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 265 

this phase will occur to every one. So also will the names of 
Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who, in their reaction from vulgar 
rationalism, tried to make religion entirely a matter of feeling 
or of the heart. The certitude of this stage, I have said, is no 
measure of the worth of the contents of feeling. De affectibus 
non est disputandum. Schleiermacher went so far, we know, as 
to say that every religion or religious feeling was good and true ; 
thus proposing a philosophy ''as much contrary to revealed re- 
ligion as to rational knowledge," and making anything like a 
communion of worshipers impossible. Each one has his own 
feeling, and this may be so emphasized as to lead to both sec- 
tarianism and atheism. 

But, strictly speaking, this elementary phase of religion is 
quite indefinite as to what it feels. Until other elements enter 
in, there is no personal object given to worship. It represents 
the first conscious mysterious impulse toward the infinite and 
eternal. It represents those elements of reverence and confi- 
dence which made our Saviour promise the Kingdom of Heaven 
to children. But it is a phase into which other elements do 
speedily enter. The activity of the human spirit in relation with 
the Infinite Spirit impels it on to definite conceptions of God and 
content of feeling. Milk for babes, stronger nourishment for 
the growing child. 

(2). Religion as Knowing, — The phase of knowing in re- 
ligion.^ 

We distinguish here three phases of knowing: (a) Con- 
ception, (b) Reflection^ and (c) Comprehension. 

(a). That of Conception. — Mere feeling is rather an hypo- 
thetical stage of activity. Objects that produce feeling are soon 
named, or learned, or imagined. The child is soon initiated 
into definite religious conceptions which nourish his religious 
activity. This introduction into objective forms of belief and 

^ I may refer to my Studies in HegeVs Philosophy of Religion, Chap. 
IV, for a fuller and somewhat varied statement and criticism of this 
second phase. 



266 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

worship is congenial with his developing intelligence. It helps 
him to name and to imagine the object of his religious feeling. 
The activity in this sphere is that of imagination. It is what 
we may call mental art — picture-thinking taking the place of 
picture-making. It is thought raising us out of sense. Here 
the object and the content of the religious feeling appear in 
forms corresponding to the degree of culture possessed. The 
new wine is first put into old bottles and then new bottles are 
formed out of the fragments of the bursted old ones. 

This mental art of picture conceptions advances, bodying 
forth in less sensuous forms and in more abstract language the 
content of the religious feeling they help to quicken. The sav- 
age indulges in rude sensuous art, or combines it with rude 
mental art, personifying earth, air and sky. The Christian 
child is met in this phase of activity with Christian names an*d 
symbols, which help him to higher conceptions of what he feels 
blindly stirring in his soul. They do not create, but only help 
develop his religious life in more rational form. The more ab- 
stract form of conception, i, e., dogma, is of little use here, un- 
less it be accompanied with parable, legend and narrative. It 
is the time that religion is nourished on narrative-metaphor. 
The Bible contains a good proportion of such food for the 
young, and Christian history, especially in heroic and martyr 
days, furnishes more. But these should be supplemented by 
current religious literature, comparable with that furnished our 
young people by St, Nicholas and The Youth's Companion, in- 
stead of the autumnal leaflets and childish Sunday-school books. 

By means of literature the Divine Educator co-works in de- 
veloping and strengthening the bond between Himself and the 
growing child. Such narrative-metaphors are winged, and 
bear the young soul aloft to the very heart of God. It is the 
very sustenance for which young souls are hungry, and mere 
catechetical instruction in abstract theology is the veriest chaflf 
to chafe and wither their aspirations, unless it be judiciously 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 267 

concealed in fragrant flowers or ripe fruit. Give them the lus- 
cious grape, and not merely the seed. 

Along with this goes the religious nurture, through public 
worship. Church festivals and ceremonies. The Christian year, 
followed out as dramatically as possible, is the best teacher of 
Christian truth. Besides, all this brings out the social side of 
religion, and helps to unite them with God through uniting with 
their fellows. 

The catechetical and dogmatic period soon comes. The an- 
alyzing and comparing and generalizing activity begins its work 
in due time. Here metaphors harden into fact or are general- 
ized into dogma. The winged metaphor will be clipped. The 
seed of the ripe fruit will be sought. The soul will crave defi- 
nite and systematic truth. Subjective feeling and its imagina- 
tive vesture must find a basis in "Church Doctrine and Bible 
Truth." Systems of theology are often not much in advance 
of this period of abstract conception. 

How best to conceive God, and how best represent the es- 
sential religious relation in systematic form, is the question at 
this stage, as the earlier picture-form becomes more abstract. 
This is the time for positive catechetical instruction, mingled 
with sufficient personal and rational persuasion to win assent. 
The proper ground of certitude here is a mingling of reason 
and authority. The authoritative teaching of the Church, prop- 
erly presented, is God's method of further development of the 
bond between himself and his children. What great Chris- 
tian teachers and what the Church in oecumenical councils have 
framed, come as the most vocal angels of the truth. 

Such teaching is the media of the Holy Spirit co-working 
with the communal spirit. It represents the best expression of 
a large Christian consciousness through many centuries. It can 
and should be given with authority. Grounded upon the vital 
idea of religion, it has a rational authority to which every mem- 
ber, at this stage, will gladly and unconditionally submit. Such 
authoritative teaching is the craving of the soul, and so essential 



268 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

to its religious life. Here such authority nourishes and quick- 
ens the religious life of the member, and submerges his indi- 
vidual conceits by giving him the one Lord, one faith and one 
baptism of the Universal Church. It is the time to go to school ; 
the time when the mind craves teachers and longs for the wis- 
dom that is beyond it. It craves to know what it ought to be- 
lieve. It believes spontaneously on authority. It is also the 
time for Bible teaching, for Christian education through sacred 
literature. 

The Bible is the Church's record of the historical revelation 
upon which it is founded. It contains the word of God in all 
its forms of literature. It is also the vehicle of revelation to 
the inquiring mind and longing heart. Protestants have made 
no mistake in reverting to it as life-giving and authoritative. 
It will continue to be both of these when the fullest and freest 
criticism shall have done its historical, psychological and literary 
work upon it. It will be found to yield a much more wholesome 
authority than under its uncriticised form of infallibility. 

Many may stop contented with imagination on the stand- 
point of Church services, with their symbolism and ceremonial 
observances. Others, less aesthetic, stop on the more abstract 
form of dogma, or orthodox belief. Vulgar Romanism and 
Orthodoxy illustrate these two phases of conception, of sensuous 
and mental idolatry, both of which are normal phases in the re- 
ligious process. 

(&). Now comes the period of reflection, criticism and 
doubt. Reflection, indeed, forms a part of the activity which re- 
ceives and forms definite religious conceptions and right belief. 
But it does not stop here. The normal activity of this phase im- 
pels on to a criticism of traditional and current conceptions on its 
way to a comprehension of the necessity of religion and an esti- 
mate of their comparative worth and real validity. Perfect rep- 
resentation or conception of God is intrinsically impossible, 
either in the form of pictured or of abstract symbol. Thought, 
in seeking this, has abstracted the essence of all its symbols or 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 269 

precipitated them into definite and logical forms, and annexed 
reasons thereto. The reflective activity now impels to an ex- 
amination of these forms, and of the reasons alleged for them. 
It is essentially critical and inevitably sceptical. It realizes the 
limitations and contradictions of attained conceptions. It then 
seeks to vindicate them by rationalistic investigations and evi- 
dences, only to multiply doubts. This is a necessary phase in 
the life of every ingenuously thoughtful Christian and Church. 
It is the work of the spirit criticising its own inadequate crea- 
tion. It is the normal activity of the human spirit responsive 
to new revelations from the Divine Spirit. It is not an alien 
force, but the implicit infinite energizing through and above the 
inadequate forms of its hitherto realization in the finite spirit. 
Such criticism is the normal activity of the growing human 
spirit responsive to the Divine Spirit's new revelation, of which 
it may scarcely be conscious. The advocatiis diaboli cannot 
prevent the canonization of such temporary doubt as sane and 
saintly. Dogma making and dogma sustaining, straining, 
breaking and re-formation are all the normal work of the same 
phase of thought, as understanding, on its way to the compre- 
hension of the concrete rationality of Catholic symbols. It must 
reflect upon the various musts which have hitherto been control- 
ling. It is the inherently just and normal demand of the hu- 
man spirit to know the source and ground of these musts; to 
find a rationale of the authority of Bible, Church and reason. 

The authority of Bible and Church may be rudely ques- 
tioned by the reason that finally questions itself. Its aim is to 
see what it is in them that makes the Bible, Church and reason 
worthy authorities. Much of this criticism is directed against 
accidental, temporary and local conceptions of Christianity, 
which are inherently false to its spirit and purpose. It is the 
attempt to reconceive Christ under the changed conditions of 
modern science and thought. This task of reformation is laid 
upon many Christians and many ages. What we call revivals 
and reformations are only more emphatic workings of this 



270 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

spirit in the Christian community. It is the dynamic of the 
Christian Zeitgeist itself, impelHng to more comprehensive and 
vital knowledge of Christ, and should lead, on the one hand, to 
the throwing aside the accumulated rubbish of other periods, 
and, on the other hand, to the recovering and holding fast all 
that is good in previous forms of Christianity. From the moth- 
er's knee to the grave ; from Bethlehem to the New Jerusalem, 
the Christian man and Church have this reflective, critical task 
to perform, in order to advance in Christian knowledge and life. 
It is a process of negating truth by affirming fuller truth. 

Half of current scepticism comes from the pressing upon 
this generation outgrown conceptions and imperfect develop- 
ments of the Gospel. To acknowledge frankly the necessary 
imperfection of progress is not to detract from the Gospel, but 
is to take away the edge of half the criticism. To attempt a 
readjustment of the letter to the spirit of Christianity; to re- 
conceive Christianity, if you will, in terms of modern thought 
and imagery; to put the spirit in new forms; to abrogate the 
old letter in its fulfillment in the new — something like this is 
the problem set for the defender of the faith to-day. To ac- 
knowledge that Christianity has often been bound up with im- 
perfect views of science, history, philosophy and politics ; and 
with poor mechanical views of God, the world and man; and 
that to-day we are trying to free the spirit from these limita- 
tions and from the letter of theological and ecclesiastical dog- 
matism with which it has been unduly hampered, is to win 
sympathetic hearing and help, when otherwise we would meet 
with no vital response. 

When this critical activity is abstract, it busies itself with 
finding grounds or reasons pro and con. It takes Christianity 
out of its concrete process and treats it abstractly as chiefly 
logical definitions. It proves and disproves and generally 
ends, unless it becomes concrete, in that negative form which 
should only be a mid station. This abstract criticism is known 
as that of common rationalism. The Aufkldrung, Eclair cisse- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 271 

ment and Rationalism were the three national forms of the 
''age of reason." The eighteenth century should have sufficed 
for this narrow sort of mental work. But it continues even in 
this twentieth century in its senile form of agnosticism. It 
has ultimately doubted itself as the organ of truth. 

It is only when the spirit's activity droops and stops its 
work at this abstract negative stage that doubt can be called 
sinful. It is then putting the absolute emphasis on subjective 
reason. It is then non-human, non-rational, a violation of the 
binding relation between God and man through historical and 
social media. Such absolute negativity of subjectivism is the 
very essence of the devil. No one is more to be pitied and no 
one is more to be dreaded than the man who has stuck fast in 
the mire of this standpoint. It is the natural penalty of 
thought abstracted from action and institution. It is the pen- 
alty of holding to Christianity as chiefly logical doctrine. For 
belief is rarely the outcome of formal logical procedure. 

Much of the prevalent skepticism, however, is earnest, 
serious, wistful, and not Mephistophelian. It is within the 
church in which its martyrs have been nurtured. It is normal. 
Puritanism, in its day, and Anglo-Catholicism both doubted 
protested and deformed as well as reformed the contemporary 
forms of faith and life. They appealed from a present to a 
higher conception of Christianity. The New Theology is but 
another illustration of the same activity. Faith is at the bot- 
tom of such work. It is the outworking of a higher concep- 
tion of Christianity in the common Christian consciousness. 
The real ground of criticism is here the real ground of cer- 
titude in this transition epoch. It is faith's apprehension of a 
deeper and larger revelation breaking forth from fettered 
Bible, Church and reason. It is the spirit negating, in order 
to reform, its inadequate conceptions — often, indeed, only an 
effort to understand, that it may hold wath stronger conviction 
its catholic heritage. In this is seen the infinite cunning of 
the guiding Spirit in spiritually minded men and in the Chris- 



272 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

tian community. It is letting doubt have its way while using 
it as an instrument to accomplish higher aims. The normal 
end of such doubt is a comprehension of the natural and per- 
sistent co-relation and co-working of the Divine and human 
spirit in historic process, which explains and vindicates at 
comparative worth all previous conceptions and institutions. 

This can, from the nature of the case, now come only from 
a genuine comprehension of the fact of the Incarnation and 
its historic effect in life, thought and institution. The religion 
of the Incarnation is the concrete form of reason that meets 
and fulfills the outworn abstract reason of this stage. Having 
proved to its satisfaction in agnosticism, that its own sub- 
jective ideals were not rational, it turns to the real to find the 
concrete objective rational. If it arrives at a comprehensive 
view, at a philosophy of history at all, it must find in the re- 
ligion of the Incarnation the ripest and ultimate form of ra- 
tionality. With Aristotle philosophy was a thoughtful com- 
prehension of the encyclopaedia of Greek life and experience; 
with Hegel it was the same speculative comprehension of the 
concrete experience of Christendom. That is the objective 
matter of this phase of the activity of thought which we have 
called 

(c) Comprehension as the highest form of knowing. We 
are chiefly concerned with the mode of its activity, rather than 
with its contents. Its mode is that of insight, system, of corre- 
lation of all its relativities into a self-related organic process. It 
is thought looking behind and before all previous phases, and 
comprehending them as vital elements of a totality. It is 
concrete experience taking full account of itself, winging its 
flight from both earthly and airy abstractions. It is the in- 
coming of the tidal wave, to flood the little pools left here and 
there, and to restore their continuity with the great ocean. It 
is an overcoming of previous standpoints in one that correlates 
and embraces them all in a system which is self-related. It 
rises to the conception of the necessity of self-consciousness, 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 273 

which is perfect freedom. The heart of this system is the 
primal, persistent and vital bond between God and man, or 
religion. The result of its activity, as I have said, is condi- 
tioned by its subject-matter to-day. That subject-matter is 
the religion of the Incarnation; and philosophy only reaches 
its ultimate insight by a comprehension of that which is. 

With many Christian thinkers the activity of the spirit 
does not persist unto this goal, where the wounds of reason 
are healed by reason; where the ground of authority is self- 
contained and self-necessitated through a profound synthesis 
of them all. Either dogma or doubt catches and holds them. 
They remain in either one or the other of these phases of com- 
mon rationalism. And yet the spirit's demand and possibility 
is to make this ein iieberwundener Standpunkt, Often it is 
only implicitly overcome. It is overcome in that vital act of 
faith which we may call abbreviated knowledge. It is over- 
come practically, but not in the way of thought. Philosophy is 
only the making explicit for thought, what is contained in the 
ordinary Christian consciousness; only seeing the necessity of 
the real freedom in God's service; the realization of the bond 
between God and man contained in the consciousness of par- 
don, peace and communion with God through the incarnate 
Word. It is the discovery of the logic of the Logos in Chris- 
tian experience and history. It accepts Christianity as the 
manifestation, the positive form of the absolute religion, affirm- 
ing in its doctrine of the Incarnation the essential kinship of 
the human with the Divine Spirit. It is the only thing that 
will save those who have passed into the critical, doubting 
stage, from either a hopeless scepticism or an arbitrary sub- 
mission to a non-intelligent power, which is the essence of 
superstition. 

Unsophisticated piety has no need of this. But how little 

of current religion is unsophisticated. How thoroughly the 

rationalism of the understanding has laid hold upon the 

majority of Christians. They are asking and seeking earnestly 

18 



274 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

for reasons for their religion. Current apologetics, or external 
reasons, may temporarily satisfy many. But their inadequacy 
is also keenly realized by many others. They demand a suffi- 
cient reason, an adequate First Principle, which validates all 
proofs and authorities. Reflection, or the mere reasoning of 
the understanding, is incapable of reaching this. The only 
question then is, whether thought shall and can persist to its 
fruition, or whether the spirit shall faint in hopeless agnosti- 
cism, offering itself an unworthy sacrifice to either doubt or 
dogma. But here we must not neglect the value of the practi- 
cal reason, the demand for religion in our nature, and the ade- 
quacy of current forms to meet this demand. We shall find 
that the theoretical can never reach its convincing result with- 
out inclusion of the practical reason. 

In this work, thought passes in appreciative critical review 
all the categories which it has hitherto used in rationalizing 
experience, impelled onward to an absolute First Principle 
which will include and explain them all ; that is, it seeks for a 
self-related and self-relating system, or a science of forms of 
thought, some of which Theology, as well as Science, uses in 
its work. It is restless till it rests in a sufficient First Principle, 
adequate to explain all experience. Being, substance, force, 
cause, co-relation, external finality, an extra-mundane Deity 
arbitrarily creating and destroying, are categories which, when 
used as first principles, give rise to positivism, pantheism, ideal- 
ism, deism and agnosticism. But concrete religious experi- 
ence to-day is such as to render all such interpretations inade- 
quate. The abstract supernaturalism of much theology, as 
well as abstract mechanical naturalism, has failed to reach the 
adequate conception of God which makes creation, the Incar- 
nation and restoration possible. 

Thought is restless beyond these conceptions till it reaches 
the thought of an Absolute Self-consciousness who manifests 
Himself creatively in the finite world and man, binding them 
back to Himself. It declines any conception which makes na- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 275 

ture, man and God to be discordant and irreconcilable ideas. 
It is especially concerned to find the conception which binds 
man and God in the congenial bond which religion implies. 
Beginning with the individual finite mind, it passes through all 
the encompassing social circles, finding in the highest no place 
for "the religion of humanity." Religion demands a bond 
with a super-humanity. 

Beginning with the conception of an abstract supra-mun- 
dane Deity, it passes through all theories of creation till it 
reaches the conception of the concrete absolute Self-conscious- 
ness that must create, and realize himself in his offspring. 
Abstract mechanical necessity, of course, is here entirely out of 
the question. It is the free necessity of his own concrete 
triune Personality which leads to creation and its culmination 
in the Incarnation. Such a First Principle contains in its very 
nature organic bond with his offspring. 

And in the light of this alone is finite spirit, its nature, his- 
tory and destiny, intelligible. Here religion is seen to be 
necessary. Its elements of revelation and faith are in the re- 
ciprocal process of the Divine Spirit to the human, and of the 
human spirit to the divine. 

Philosophy does not create this conception of the First 
Principle out of nothing. It is not an abstract a priori concep- 
tion. It seeks for the logical ultimate, and the chronological 
presupposition of all the other categories under which experi- 
ence is alone possible for man. These categories or conditions 
of thinking can only be found by reflection upon actual experi- 
ence. Philosophy is simply the science of these categories, 
implicit in the experience even of the most unreflecting; some 
of them becoming more explicit in the special sciences. It is 
not a knowledge of all things, but a comprehension of the un- 
derlying conditions of all knowledge in a system with an ade- 
quate concrete generic First Principle. Here its special in- 
sight is directed to the theological conditions of religious ex- 
perience, or, in particular, of the content of the Christian 



276 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

consciousness as to sin and redemption, or of alienated and of 
restored communion (religion) with God through Jesus Christ. 
In other words, it aims at comprehensive insight into the ra- 
tionaHty of Christian experience, or at philosophical theology 
founded upon historical and dogmatic theology. 

It does not destroy or transcend religion, which is the 
most vital realization of the bond between God and man. Re- 
ligion is the highest, the complete practical, reconciliation, and 
is not destined to lose itself in philosophy. Philosophy does 
not set itself above religion, but only above partial and con- 
flicting interpretations of its experience. It leads us to know 
for thought and in thought, as reasonable and true and holy, 
what religion is as life and experience. It validates this ex- 
perience for thought. It gives the highest authority to re- 
ligion, by demonstrating its absolute and not merely its psy- 
chological necessity. It reaches the ultimate ground of certi- 
tude, which was only implicit and unthought of in the stage 
of feeling. 

It reaches, too, certitude as to objective religion. It sees 
the necessity and worth of all creeds and institutions as the 
outcome of the religious bond — the work of the spirit of man 
inspired by the Spirit of God in a course of divine education 
of the race. This spirit of comprehension is never envious. 
It often romanticizes, growing tender and reverent in its ap- 
preciation of the forms of the earlier stages in which it has 
been nourished. If it has passed thoroughly through the scep- 
tical stage, it can never be ungenerous in its estimate of either 
dogma or doubt. Its insight into the truth of the heart of all 
religion; its ripe conviction of the necessary organic com- 
munion of God and man; its comprehension of the process 
of the Divine education, or its philosophy of history, enables 
it to find itself, to make itself at home at the humblest domes- 
tic altar as well as in the grandest cathedral, always holding 
the critical faculty in abeyance, as having been satisfied once 
for all. It thus gives the highest authority in religion, as 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 277 

deduced from and implied in itself, as necessary. Holy and 
reverent is this spirit of insight, for it is the very Spirit of God 
which has bound the devil of doubt — a 

"Part of that power understood, 
Which always wills the bad, and always works the good." 

It does not place itself above religion, again, because it is 
the child of religion. It reaches its conception of God only 
because religion has already realized the essential bond be- 
tween God and man. In particular, it is the child of Christi- 
anity — the thoughtful comprehension of its own experience. 
This starts from the culmination of the historical manifestation 
of the bond between God and man. Jesus Christ manifested 
this bond perfectly. He was a man manifesting perfect abso- 
lute union with God. Rational truth can only be apprehended 
on condition of its existence in natural and secular form. It 
must be immanent in a historical process. The man Jesus did 
not primarily appeal to thought. He lived his practical life in 
the world. He came unto his own, and won them by his life. 
He became the fulfillment of the supernatural order implicit in 
all previous history, the consummation of the self-necessitated 
Divine act of creation in time. Here the hitherto immanent 
and constitutional co-working of God with man came to per- 
fect manifestation. God became man because humanity was 
an essential phase of his own life. Here his perfect self-con- 
sciousness was manifested. Son of man and Son of God were 
manifested as congenial and inherent parts of the Divine Self- 
consciousness. Here was reached the axis of the world's his- 
tory, or, for what concerns us at present, the axis of the world's 
thought about God and man; for we are still abstracting the 
concrete thought from the more concrete process of Christian 
life and institution. 

Christian thought, which is modern thought, starts from 
the sensuous life of Christ and continues following the secular 
extension of this life in humanity. This has been the woof of 
which thought has been the warp in the concrete web of the 



278 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

modern world. Previous philosophy had been an attempted 
comprehension of the relation of God and man as manifested 
in human experience. With the advent of Christ came new 
and fuller experience. It did not appeal primarily to thought. 
The practical experience of this life and its extension in the life 
of the Christian community came first. But thinking is an 
inherent human necessity which continued in the Christian 
community. It was self-necessitated to reflect upon and ex- 
press in intellectual forms the content of its experience. The 
thought activity was new only as modified by its subject mat- 
ter. Thoughtful men, men trained in philosophy, became 
Christians, and Christians became thoughtful. Hence Chris- 
tian doctrines, and ultimately Christian creeds. These repre- 
sent the most catholic thought of the intellectual aristocracy of 
the community, thinking upon the content of catholic experi- 
ence. They claimed the guidance of the Holy Spirit gradu- 
ally leading them into all truth. The Nicene symbol repre- 
sents the highest and the most oecumenical expression of this 
catholic thought. This gives its authority to the completed 
Nicene symbol. 

There are parts of this symbol which can have their proper 
authority only to those who can think themselves into its defini- 
tions and see how it states ultimate thought. Such thought 
should be the goal of all Christian thinking or theology. But 
all such knowledge is an approximate development toward, 
rather than an actual attainment. In the highest speculative 
thought and in the most oecumenical creed we still know only 
in part. But, for the understanding of the Nicene symbol, 
this speculative thought is necessary, as is also a knowledge 
of the whole history of the age which gave birth to it. Hence 
its general use in public worship may not be desirable. Re- 
peating, parrot-like, forms of sound doctrine without any con- 
ception of their sense, is a pagan custom that we need not en- 
courage. The Nicene symbol has its proper use in church- 
councils and clerical meetings. But perhaps this would be too 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 279 

great a restriction. One can join with the great congrega- 
tion of saints of the centuries in hymning this beHef in the full 
divinity and the real manhood of Jesus Christ. 

Our discussion implies a distinction between what is au- 
thoritative for comprehensive thought, and the much larger 
part of dogma which consists of metaphorical conceptions, 
partial theories and inadequate definitions which are local and 
transient — at best, only truth in the making. It is this por- 
tion, too, about which much of the anxious thought and con- 
troversy and doubt of our day is concerned. To this part be- 
long theories of the inspiration of the Bible, of the atonement, 
of future punishment, of the method of the creation of nature 
and of man. Must I believe them? Do we believe them? 
Have they believed them? If so, which one of them, and 
why? Here the history of Christian doctrine can aid us 
greatly. 

To the doubting and harassed Christian asking what must 
I believe as to many traditional and current conceptions, we 
may answer : Believe them only so far as, from a study of their 
history, you can see them to be necessary implications of the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. Take them at a relative ration- 
ality, as more or less harmonious with the general Christian 
sentiment. 

The oecumenical creed is here a law of liberty. But it is 
also a law of duty. We not only may, but we must freely in- 
vestigate the grounds and worth of all other conceptions 
Biblical criticism and the theory of creation by evolution, the 
doctrines of the future life and of the atonement, the question 
of Church polity and ritual, all are open questions, in the solu- 
tion of which we must take our part. The authoritative must 
is here that of free investigation, instead of slavish submission. 

Protestantism repudiated the unethical authority of an un- 
holy Church, but soon yielded the same sort of blind reverence 
to the Bible. The change was not wholly a mistake. It was 
the most spiritual and ethical attitude that could then be taken. 



28o THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

The evil grew out of the abuse to which all good things are 
subject. Superstition changed this living word into a dead 
letter. It was given the place assigned by pagans to their 
oracles, or by Mohammedans to the Koran. Bibliolatry be- 
came as real as Mariolatry. Orthodoxy was based upon a lit- 
eral interpretation of an infallible oracle. Hence more than 
half the honest doubt of our day. Hence, too, the form of 
unevidencing evidences, serving only to increase scepticism. 

But there is a reformation' rapidly taking place in regard to 
the worth and authority of the Bible, almost as great as that 
accomplished by the Reformation as to the authority of the 
Church. Only this is an intellectual, while that was a moral 
revolt. It may take generations to bring men generally to a 
recognition of the rightful spiritual authority of the Bible, as 
it has taken centuries to turn the tide of appreciation in favor 
of recognizing the rightful and necessary authority of the 
Church. 

Certainly it is not to be overlooked that a total revolution 
has taken place in our day in the conception of the method of 
revelation and inspiration. Our Bishops, in a late Pastoral 
Letter, acknowledge that the "advances made in Biblical re- 
search have added a holy splendor to the crown of devout 
scholarship,'' and mention both '^shrinking superstition and ir- 
reverent self-will" as earth-born clouds that tend to obscure 
its holy light. 

We can barely indicate the reformed conception of the 
Bible which is rapidly replacing the old one. 

The Bible is literature. It is sacred literature. It is the 
''survival of the fittest" of the sacred literature of the Jews 
and of the early Christians. Like the creeds, it is the product 
of the Church, and at the same time the fountain and the 
norm of Christian life and doctrine. It is a record of revela- 
tion done into history; a record of the historical incarnation 
of the Son of God, set in a partial preparation for it, and in a 
partial result of its primitive extension. It thus contains 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 281 

God's revelation. It is a vehicle of that revelation. It is it- 
self a revelation of God to the student of it, and to the whole 
Church. It is not errorless, or infallible, or of equal value 
throughout. It is the Book of the Church to the Church and 
for the Church. Hence the Christian^ consciousness, rather 
than individuals, is the best interpreter of it. It also, in turn, 
produces and gives the norm of development to the life and 
doctrine of the Church. It is a living word, appealing to the 
mind and heart and conscience after criticism has done its ut- 
most work upon it. 

We still have the Bible. The Bible and the Bible only, is 
the Book of the Church, and the rule of faith. But we do not 
have — or we shall not, when critical study shall have finished 
its work — a word-book of equally valuable proof-texts, infal- 
lible in toto et partibus. Criticism demonstrates that the Bible 
is a record of divine revelation done into human history under 
the limitations of the mental and religious culture of the people 
of current times. All parts are not of equal value. Christ 
himself and his apostles criticised the morality and ritual of 
the Old Testament. Our Gospels are a fourfold transcription 
of inspired teaching in the Church of the first century. The 
Church was before the New Testament. It is the Church, 
founded and growing under the limitations of historical con- 
ditions, that gives us our authentic record of the life of Christ. 
Good Churchmen now generally say that the orthodox view 
of the Bible as a verbally infallible text-book has never been 
a doctrine of the Catholic Church. I believe that apologetics 
should frankly concede this, and thus free Christianity from 
the hundred criticisms that have force only as against such a 
theory — none whatever against the Bible as the Book of books. 

So as to liberty and duty in regard to other open questions. 
The greatest theologians of Christendom have always main- 
tained this. Only zealots and party politicians have flourished 
an authoritative must over Christians in such questions. But 
this duty demands that we shall try to get at the heart, at the 



a82 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

real significance of such conceptions and theories ; to modestly 
seek to understand them before we dare call them irrational, 
after the short and easy method of many self-styled rational- 
ists. Indeed, the historical method has largely replaced this 
negative rationalistic method even with unbelievers. They, 
too, thus find a relative justification for what they reject. It 
remains true, however, that we can even thus only accept many 
traditional conceptions and dogmas in a Pickwickian sense. 
Our belief in them will accord with Bishop Pearson's curiously 
elliptical definition of belief as "the assent to that which is 
credible as credible" — i e., belief is belief in that which is be- 
lievable as believable. 

But here we are still in the sphere of the liberty and duty 
of criticising inadequate metaphors and opinions. The task 
is how best to conceive or re-conceive Christianity through 
aid of past conceptions, and also through the aid of the 
changed conceptions furnished by modern science and culture. 
We cannot be chained to winged or to petrified metaphors of 
a past, whose whole material for imagination was very dif- 
ferent from that of our times. We cannot accept them as au- 
thoritative, but must create the best we can, which will be as 
congenially authoritative to us as theirs were to them. More 
cannot be demanded. The modern ideal of knowledge is 
drawn on the canvas of a progressive education of the race. 
It is in accordance with this ideal that the most authoritative 
truth for one people or age may have but relative validity for 
another. Nor should the value of metaphor and abstract 
dogma as media of the divine revelation be overlooked in this 
criticism of their worth as scientific knowledge. Only we 
must not seek in them ultimate ground of authority. As we 
pass through self-compelled criticism from one conception to 
another, we are finding our real ground to be ''the unity of 
identity and difference," of dogma and doubt. The new is 
better than the old only as it contains the old as a vital, though 
transmuted, element. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 283 

But even in the most concrete historical and philosophic 
view of truth we are still too abstract. We are studying Chris- 
tianity as if it were chiefly a system of intellectual truth. We 
are abstracting the web from the woof, the Logos of the incar- 
nation from the whole of its practical extension. We have 
acknowledged that Christianity must be done into history, into 
concrete life and institution, before it could be seen to be rea- 
son, just as the earthly life of Christ was essential to the seeing 
him as the Logos, Philosophy, then, must revert to this. 
Christianity is more than feeling or thinking. It is also deed. 
Theoretical cognition is not sufficient. 

** Grey, friend, is all theory; green 
Is the golden tree of life.'* 

(3). Religion as Willing, — We have, then, to notice the 
third form in which religion manifests itself — that of willing. 

Comprehension has to embrace not only the grey form of 
right thinking, but also the green tree of golden fruit — the ex- 
tension of the incarnation in the practical life of the social 
body. Religion is not merely the feeling or seeing the bond 
between God and man; it is also the determination of life by 
the bond. It is willing to be God-like. This is the building 
power, the realizing of the extension of the incarnation to the 
sanctifying the whole of secular life. It is the Rome-element 
constantly accompanying or preceding the other phases of re- 
ligion. It posits, puts in concrete form the certitude of both 
feeling and thought. It is founded upon the rock of secular 
reality. It was present at the giving of the Law upon Sinai, 
in the formation of the Jewish Theocracy and building its 
temple, as it was in Rome becoming the imperial mistress of 
the secular world. This bed-rock certitude has never left it- 
self without a witness and an organ in the form of institutions 
which have been the media of all our culture. This has been 
the activity of what Kant called the ''Practical Reason'' or 
creative reason moulding the concrete into accordance with its 



284 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

norm. It does the truth, and thus creates the forms which in 
turn nourish and educate it. 

This Rome-element, or the ''Practical Reason," is eternal, 
always placing itself above past history by making new his- 
tory, but always vindicating past history by the new which that 
past alone makes possible. It may be called the petrifying ele- 
ment of religion. It catches and fixes in progressive station- 
ary form the fleeting phase of feeling and the restless dialectic 
of thought, and yet ever uses the new and more ample materi- 
als they furnish for its work. 

Man does what he thinks and feels. Man thinks what he 
does. Man is what he does. If we were compelled to choose 
between any one of these abstractions, we should say, Man is 
what he does. The zvill is the man. It is the concrete unity 
of all the elements of man. Any act of will is the expression 
of the whole man as he is at that time. It is his character, his 
law, his authority, his certitude. Doing, he is ever organizing 
his self, and ever rising on stepping-stones of past deeds to 
higher ones. Doing, he knows, the doctrine of God. 

But man is social, and pre-eminently so in religion. The 
kingdom of heaven on earth has from the first been a social 
community. Its deed is its real creed. Hence the worth of 
what is called the moral argument for Christianity — its visible 
power in regenerating and softening mankind beyond all dis- 
quisitions of philosophers and all exhortations of moralists. 
This is also the truth in the argument that Christianity is a 
life of God in the soul of man, rather than a creed ; an imma- 
nent regenerative power, a mystical presence that moves the 
homesick soul to find its home in God even in the ordinary 
routine of secular life. This too is the truth in the argument 
from personal experience of the members of this social body. 
Christianity finds them, meets their religious needs, nourishes 
their spiritual life, proves its adequacy to human need in all 
joyful and trying experiences. Its conceptions of life, of duty, 
of forgiveness, of eternal life — all the deeper moral and re- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 285 

ligious needs of the human heart — are met in the presentation 
of the Gospel by the Church to its members. This social re- 
ligion is a religion of both inspiration and consolation. The 
Church meets and incorporates the new-born babe into its 
motherly bosom in holy baptism. Throughout life it lifts up 
its perpetual Eucharist to meet his needs, whether he be cry- 
ing De Profiindis or shouting In Excelsis, At death it trans- 
fers him from the home below to the home above — from the 
Church militant to the Church triumphant. The certitude of 
these blessings comes from experiencing them. It is the deed 
of Christ's life in the members of his social body. 

But Christianity does not only realize itself in the practical 
life of its members, it also institutes itself in social organiza- • 
tion. Here we approach perilous ground, or rather, we have 
to sail between the Scylla of an abstract universal and an ab- 
stract individual conception of the Church. What is the form 
of the Holy Catholic Church in which all Christians believe? 
We would fain escape from the strife of tongues by calling in- 
stituted Christianity the religious kingdom or the republic of 
God— the communion of saints on earth. That is the com- 
prehensive truth. We limit ourselves to a few expository 
statements. 

Our conception of the Church depends upon our conception 
of the First Principle. If God is conceived as abstract tran- 
scendence, the whole of religion necessarily receives a semi- 
mechanical form. Transcendence implies a dualism, a gulf, 
rather than a bond between God and man, that can only be 
bridged in a mechanical way. The incarnation and its ex- 
tension alike suffer from this partial conception of God. Ro- 
manism is the standing illustration of the form of institution 
realized under this conception. High-Anglicanism is but its 
feebler counterfeit. This form has had, and still has, in some 
phases of civilization, its worth and relative justification. But 
to-day it is under the more genial congenial conception of the 
Divine immanence that we get the most comprehensive view 



286 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of the Kingdom of God as the whole of the faithful in every 
form of instituted Christianity. 

There is no universal external corporate form that is in- 
clusive. The Holy Catholic Church is like the Universal 
State, that federation of nations and Parliament of man to 
which individual states are subordinate and which is the 
world's tribunal, to pronounce and execute judgment upon 
them. Though Episcopacy be essential to the total corporate 
organization of Church and State, yet one must needs be stone- 
blind not to see churches standing without it to-day. The im- 
manent Spirit was present in earlier forms, and now He is pres- 
ent in modern forms of Church and State, which have been 
inextricably interwoven throughout history. Protestant com- 
munions are also forms of instituted Christianity, closely in 
sympathy with modern states, which base their constitutions 
on the principles of freedom and respect for personality. 
Protestants necessarily regard the question of policy or consti- 
tution from a different point of view from that of Romanists. 
It is not an article of faith with them. The Romanist con- 
ceives of instituted Christianity as a mechanical, unethical 
form of authority. We recognize its institution as an ethical 
and historical process of the spirit immanent in Chrstian na- 
tions and communities. This springs from our conception of 
the First Principle as concrete Self-Consciousness, or Love, 
self-necessitated to create, and to relate Himself to his created 
offspring. It is a part of the philosophy of history which is 
quite modern, and yet Christian. 

Romanism is one phase of this process. But modern 
Christendom has passed beyond Rome as ultimate. It is 
largely Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon. Still it is only a part of 
a process which must conserve the Greek and Roman element. 
The Greek element stands for philosophy or orthodoxy, the 
Roman for law or polity, and the Anglo-Saxon for free spirit 
or ethical personality. Creed and polity are permanent ele- 
ments which Protestantism should conserve with its free 



PSYCHOLOGICAL FORMS OF RELIGION 287 

spirit without being seduced back to the stagnant orthodoxy 
of the Greek Church or to the terrible tyranny of Roman ec- 
clesiasticism. This is our task. It has its dangers, but it is 
a duty. The Christian consciousness is not content with so 
many Protestant variations. It yearns for unity. 

We are still in the sphere of history in the making, but 
take our part in it under the conception of the Divine imma- 
nence. This conception is monistic and organic. It is the cate- 
gory of comprehension or of totality, self-active and self-re- 
alizing. Its chief danger is that of overlooking differences, 
instead of reducing them to organic elements. But it is the 
conception which steers clear of all subjective individualism, 
and is only consistent with the social view of man in all 
spheres. 

Thus it finds its ground of authority in the communal Chris- 
tian consciousness, and strives to make this as oecumenical as 
possible. There are always relatively catholic institutions. 
These have been formative of every Christian person. Only 
in and through life in some form of them has he become a 
Christian. They have been God-given conditions to limit, in 
order to educe and realize, the individual. To be a member 
of some form of instituted Christianity is essential to one's be- 
ing able to appreciate its rationality. It is from within such 
nurture that doubt may come to force him to wider concep- 
tions or more catholic fellowship. Authority after authority, 
as teacher after teacher, may be transcended on the way to 
higher thought and life. But it must always be within some 
concrete form of Christian institution. The apprehension of 
its rationality comes after the experience of having our best- 
self educed by the process. The larger our fellowship, the 
larger authority and rationality we shall be able to recognize 
in this conditioning Christian organization. 

Instituted Christianity needs and can have no grounds or 
evidence strictly external. It vindicates itself, as all organisms 
do. For comprehension, it is reason done into institution, the 



288 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

sum total of the outcome of the consciousness of the vital bond 
between God and man in historic process. The Church, in 
every form, is a partial organization of this recognition. 
Submission to its authority in the most catholic form is the 
rational submergence of our empty individualism in the whole 
historic life of the great brotherhood. This yielding is neither 
childlike faith nor unmanly superstition. It is the yielding 
that should come from comprehensive insight into the vital 
and constitutive relation of a concrete whole to the single mem- 
ber. The historical is seen to be the constant accompaniment 
and educer of the psychological form of our faith, while both 
rest upon the metaphysical ground of the Divine adhesion to 
His own offspring in a course of education into full sonship. 

To think ourselves into the creed, to form ourselves into 
the manners, to feel ourselves into the worship of the Church, 
is our rational duty. Such rational submission implies con- 
stant self-activity. This implies much doubt and much self- 
restraint. Hence it is vastly different from that servile, super- 
stitious yielding to dogmatic external authority that rational 
Christians will never cease to protest against as uncatholic. 

A person must always be at home with himself in the con- 
tent of his self-consciousness in order to be rational. The 
creed and cult of the Church must be adopted and self-imposed 
through recognition of their constitutive influence in his own 
development. But this development he knows can never be 
in isolation. The rational for him is the social. He lives and 
moves and has his being in and through social relations. The 
rational "I believe" thus rests psychologically and historically 
upon a "we believe." The rational "we believe" rests upon 
the Christian consciousness of the community of which we are 
organic members. This consciousness rests upon the primal 
and perennial vital bond of God with his offspring. Thus the 
ultimate ground of authority and of certitude is God's adhe- 
sion to man. The secondary, or mediating ground of certi- 
tude for the individual, is the Church, which represents the 
adhesion of man to God, through consciousness of this bond. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY' 

*'The bottom's dun drop out, massa/' said Sambo, apolo- 
getically, when he broke the teapot. Out of how many less 
earthen vessels in which truth comes to us — laws, codes, ideals, 
institutions, cults, and creeds — does the bottom seem to be drop- 
ping out to-day. Like Sambo's case, this is often due to our 
own unskillful handling. But it is also often due to a hasty 
judgment, that they even seem to be irremediably shattered. It 
is certainly needless to repeat the commonplace remarks as to 
the present unsettled condition as regards the till recently un- 
questioned authorities in human affairs. Nor is it necessary 
to more than refer to the de profundis clamor in some quarters 
for the "good old ways," and in others for ''new ways" that 
shall be equally authoritative. Nor is it necessary to analyze 
fully this craving for infallible guidance, showing its weak 
ethical and spiritual character. Neither is it necessary to trace 
the course and results of ''the age of criticism," "a criticism," 
as Kant said, "to which everything is obliged to submit," and 
to which, since his day, everything has, nolens volens, submitted. 
Nor is it necessary to trace the deflecting tendencies of a weak 
romanticism ready to fall back upon irrational elements of life, 
or of a weaker agnosticism which no longer seeks for a irov arSi^ 
while the main stream is making for reconstruction, re-bottom- 
ing, — for criticised authorities that are still authorities. 

We believe that this is the great healthy moral and intellect- 
ual stream of tendency to-day, despite the many appearances to 
the contrary. The human spirit has been criticising authorities 
to find their real basis. The work has been the work of an age 

^ Reprint of an article in The Philosophical Rev., vol. i. No. 3. 
19 2S9 



290 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

of faith — of daring, soaring and profound faith. The scepti- 
cism and iconoclasm have only been seeming or partial. The 
work has been search after reality; ''after bottom;" after "the 
''rock all the way down;" after the authority of authorities. 
The real question has been, what is the concrete universal in 
which the visible particulars throb as members? what is the 
ultimate ground, source, basis, reason which authenticates — 
gives weight and worth to the various forms of authority which 
have been the educators of mankind? 

On its intellectual side this work has been a critical regress 
upon the categories and ideals of reason, to what they necessa- 
rily presuppose. In this method modern science and philosophy 
are one, differing only in the degree and extent of their proced- 
ure. The ultimate work is being done by philosophy — the 
synoptic and synthetic work of spirit, building upon and follow- 
ing out the necessary work of science. On its ethical side, it has 
been a psychological and historical estimate of past and existing 
cults, codes and institutions to find their radical source and basis. 
This part of the work is of much wider and nearer interest, but 
as it is never carried through without the aid of the philosoph- 
ical work, we may place the philosophical first. That is, the 
task of finding the right of might, the ethical worth of code, 
creed, cult and institution can only be performed by the aid of 
philosophy. The function of philosophy is simply the compre- 
hending of the old and the new as elements of a rational process. 
It differs in toto from the not yet obsolete rationalism of the 
eighteenth century, in that it has no a priori ideal, no fixed quan- 
tity and measure of the rational. To it, the real is the rational, 
however much it may contradict the subjective reason of the in- 
dividual. It is a process, a movement of real logic through 
historic process of corporate man. 

Again it seeks the ground, rather than for ^'grounds" as the 
old rationalism did. Grounds or reasons are external and arti- 
ficial, and not inherent. But such bolstering up with external 
props inevitably leads to sophistry, or the inventing of reasons 



ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 291 

that may seem to be valid. This is the resort of one who knows 
that he is defeated ; that he has no real ground. Again, mere 
reasons are individualistic ''points of view," and one person's 
are as good as another's. Ground, on the contrary, is universal 
and objective, and yet immanent. It is that which is creative 
of differences and constitutive unity. It is organic, catholic. 
It is the First Principle of all things. It is, in the most concrete 
word possible, God. But it is God immanent, the living Ground 
of all forms and phases of existence. That which distinguishes 
philosophy from the mere rationalism of both supernaturalism 
and naturalism is found in this conception of the immanence of 
the Ground in all phases of particularity. Rationalism never 
gets beyond a Deus ex machina. It bottoms all forms of faith 
and institution on that which is beyond. Its jure divino creeds, 
cults, decalogues, politics, are all based upon a transcendent me- 
chanical First Principle. It never rises to a res completa. It 
always deals with parts without living organic link. 

With such forms criticism easily plays havoc. But philoso- 
phy sees these same forms as living parts of one self-evolving, 
self-realizing Idea, of the Absolute Unity which differentiates 
or particularizes itself, and yet is ever in and above all its par- 
ticulars. Form and image may change, but the ever-living 
spirit persists through all change — the correlated and conserved 
force of the universe. Philosophy thus gives another jure 
divino basis to all the ever-changing forms of life, creed, code 
and institution. It sees that the actual is the relatively rational, 
not because any status quo is ultimate, but because it is a pro- 
gressive manifestation of the reason that is at the heart of all 
that is. 

But when we thus dogmatically announce this Ultimate 
Ground, we find ourselves asking for reasons for it. To at- 
tempt to give external reasons, would be to fall back into that 
unresolved dualism of rationalism, which leads ultimately to 
agnosticism. For such a Ground, no sign or reason can be 
given, except that which is self-contained and self-authenticat- 



292 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

ing. How, then, let us ask, does God manifest Himself as the 
ground of all authority in the most comprehensive view of 
reality, i e., philosophy ? 

Philosophy is interpretative of phenomenal reality. It is not 
a priori, but strictly inductive. Without the woof of experience 
it is as empty as experience without its warp is blind and chaotic. 
The laws which science discovers are inductive hypotheses. So 
we may say, at the risk of being misunderstood, that the God of 
Philosophy is an inductive and yet necessary hypothesis. But 
how does it reach it? A critical estimate of the ''arguments for 
the existence of God" would be in order here, but out of pro- 
portion. Where then shall we begin? Rather where shall we 
not begin ? For every bit of experience and every act of mind 
and will implicitly contain this First Principle. Let us begin 
with the simplest form of our consciousness and rise into that 
self-consciousness which is the magic and universally elastic and 
yet adamantine circle which embraces all reality. Even Pro- 
fessor Huxley makes the confession for science ''that all the phe- 
nomena of nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us 
only as facts of consciousness." 

(a) The simplest phase of consciousness is that of indefinite 
that-ness which becomes qualified into something distinct and 
separate from the self. Qualified sensations run into masses. 
We have a quantity of existence. Here we are in the realm of 
common sense, which sees definite isolated things. But it sees 
them in time and space under the forms of quantity. If we 
stop at this stage we only have a lot of separate ^things, 
which may be analyzed into a chaos of atoms in an empty void. 
But the mind which has already thrown its unifying power over 
isolated transient sensations, to give us these things and atoms 
and the void, will not stop here. 

(&) After quantifying sensations in definite aggregates, it 
goes on to qualify and then to distinguish, relate and correlate 
them. Here the environing relations become the chief object 
of interest. Nothing in the world is single. Endless series of 



ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 293 

relations embrace and constitute anew what was at first separate 
and distinct. Environment is the fate which submerges isolated 
things. These relationing conditions are named ground, force 
law, substance and properties, cause and effect, and finally reci- 
procity. These are categories or thought-forms through which 
the mind knows things together. They are the categories which 
science uses in its work of correlating endlessly diverse phe- 
nomena into system. Each thing is, only as it is determined by 
others ^s its cause. It is the realm of impersonal law, or of 
pantheistic matter, substance or force. 

(c) But this is not ultimate. Thought still demands an Ur- 
gnind of this realm of relations. It demands a lawgiver for 
the law. It passes from causality to causa sui. That is, rela- 
tivity demands self-rel^ition. An effect implies a self-separation 
in the cause — a transference of energy to its own created object. 
Reciprocity is the bridge by which thought makes this transi- 
tion. The cause is seen to be as dependent upon its effect as 
the reverse. It first becomes a cause in its effect. Without 
this it would be causeless. Thus cause and effect have essential 
kinship, mutually begetting each other. They form one total, 
dividing itself off from itself and yet finding itself in both. 
Each is an alter ego begotten by the other, forming a totality of 
infinite connection with self, freely positing all differences and 
yet realizing only itself in them. It is always and everywhere 
the cause only of itself; that is, it is free self-activity. Self- 
separation is the essential presupposition or ground of causality. 

But the infinite regress of cause and effect is futile. The 
totality of conditions must be self-sufficient, self-moving, self- 
separating and self-relating, for outside of the totality there can 
be nothing causal. Hence changes in the totality of conditions 
are spontaneous or self-determined. Thus the categories of 
essence, which modern science uses, issue inductively in self-ac- 
tivity, self-relation, freedom and personality — the ultimate and 
constitutive presupposition underlying all objects of sense and 
all forces, laws and systems of science. 



^94 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

But as self-activity is not impersonal activity, neither can it 
be solitary activity. Self-consciousness is never an abstract, 
unitary activity. It is always constituted of trinal relations — 
subject, object and subject-object. Causa sui begets eternally 
a second free self-activity as its own object. This again is cre- 
ative in its self-recognition. Knowing is one with willing. In 
knowing himself, he creates a third equal one, in which the first 
also knows himself. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity 
is the ultimate speculative conception of the First Principle, 
knowing, willing, loving. The perfect life of this true totality 
is a life of self-constituted relationships. It is timeless and 
spaceless. Knowing eternally creates its object of knowledge; 
willing, its product ; and loving, its lover. In this trinity of re- 
lationship we may see love as the central constitutive ground, 
the absolute form of self-activity. The world and man are its 
manifestation in time and space. The poet Dante saw how even 
hell was the creation of this ''primal love" (Canto III, 6). 

Common sense inventories things; science inventories rela- 
tions ; and philosophy explains both of these inventories by the 
creative energy of the totality, or perfect self-consciousness. 

But this ascensio mentis ad Deum is, I have said, an induc- 
tive process, a critical regress to the logical condition of all ex- 
istence. It is thought's description of heaven, earth and hell, 
so far as these have come within the magic realm of self-con- 
scious experience. It is the concrete system of the fossilized 
intelligence of man in all departments of his experience. It is 
an inductive discovery and unification of the categories through 
which men know sensations, things, force, laws, self-activity. 
These types of thought came through empirical experience. 
Rather they made the experience which reveals them. Each 
type has embalmed the experience of generations. The experi- 
ence of primeval men, of Oriental, Jewish, Greek, Roman, and 
Christian man, is the woof, through the struggle to interpret 
which, this warp of thought comes into human consciousness. 



ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 295 

It is the universal constitutive of all particulars which thought 
has labored at interpreting. 

The various names which thought has at various epochs 
given to this universal ground, are called categories. The ulti- 
mate one of God, as concrete or Triune Personality, is reached 
only by thought thinking Christian experience. Philosophy 
without experience is empty, without progressive experience it 
is dead. It progresses with experience. Hence it cannot be the 
same after Christ that it was before Christ. To-day it must 
give a synopsis of the modern or Christian consciousness. The 
lowest category or conception of the universal ground was, per- 
haps, spatially the highest, — i. e., the Vedic Sky. This was an 
induction. So, too, was the Oriental conception of blank Being 
or Brahm, as well as the more modern ones of matter, substance, 
force. Thought tarries dogmatically upon one until new experi- 
ence shows its inadequacy. Advance is made through new, or 
newly comprehended, revelations of the First Principle in the 
web of experience. This implies that the thinking man has 
lived through and above all non-theistic, and all abstract theistic 
theories, the unsatisfactoriness of each successive one forcing 
thought to seek the truth just beyond, and yet implied in it, till 
concrete Personality is reached and is seen to be the eternal pre- 
supposition lying back of and giving comparative worth to each 
imperfect one, and in which they are all abrogated and fulfilled. 

We may put the whole of philosophy in one sentence 
adapted from Augustine: ''Thou hast made our minds for 
Thee, O God, and they are restless till they rest in Thee." 
This is the goal of catholic philosophy, of corporate reason, 
which vindicates all the transcended steps of its progress to 
this ultimate ground of thought. This process of philosophy 
is just the reverse of an abstract method. The God of thought 
is the most concrete, catholic Real, reached not by a process 
of abstraction from particulars to a blank universal, but by a 
process of interpretation, an inclusion of particulars and their 



296 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

environment — a totality in which all other categories live and 
move and have their being. 

But if this is such a concrete General, it must show itself 
capable of yielding in turn that from which it has been in- 
ducted. If this is the interpretation of experience, it must 
also be its interpreter. If this is the ultimate standpoint of 
reason, it must be evident how it bottoms all that is. It must 
explain all thoughts and things as parts of a great process of 
creation, or of the self-revelation of God. It is not sufficient 
to say that ''the real is the rational," if by the real we mean 
only a sterile universal. This would be of less worth than the 
deistic Deus ex machina. This First Principle must show it- 
self as the metaphysics (/x-cra, in the midst of) of nature, man, 
and his institutions 

This reverse process of tracing the genesis and relative va- 
lidity of the particulars from this concrete Reality is as difficult 
as it is necessary. Its relation to the current authority of 
physical and ethical law. State, Church, Bible, spirit of peoples, 
prophets and lawgivers, is not immediately evident. How 
does it bottom them, render them relatively jitre divino? Only 
a mere indication of the principle and method of this work, 
and of the validity can be given. 

The crucial point is the transition from the perfect First 
Principle to an imperfect world, i. e,, to creation. Here the 
creation ex nihilo and the emanation theories are the Scylla 
and Charybdis. From neither of them can thought pass to an 
adequate First Principle; nor, on the other hand, can they 
mediate between It and creation. They are unworthy of the 
God of philosophy. To-day there is an attempt to revive a 
spiritualized form of the primordial ""YXiy upon which the 
Demiurge worked. Started anew by Jacob Boehme, this the* 
osophic speculation of a </>i;<rts — an eternal non-material sub- 
stance in God as the source of creation — is forcing itself into 
the systems of Christian theologians.^ This is a commendable 

^Cf. the admirable work of the Rev. Dr. J. Steinfort Kedney: 
Christian Doctrine Harmonised, 



ULTHIATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 297 

attempt to avoid the rocks and the whirlpool. But it is not, 
and cannot be, ultimate till the <f}v(ri9 is wholly resolved and 
transmuted in the Divine Glory. This alone can save it from 
the maintenance of the eternity of the finite, or of matter, and 
make creation to be a form of free self-activity of the Divine. 
Poetic, religious and symbolic forms cannot pass for the pure, 
i. e,, concrete, thought, which philosophy demands. 

Now, the First Principle reached by philosophy and stated 
in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity can be seen as self-suffi- 
cient, as the absolute and as sufficient for creation as a free 
process of self-activity — the creation going forth in imperfect 
form in order to return in perfect form ; i, e., a process in time 
and space with the one sole final purpose of the evolution and 
education of rational immortal souls into a perfect Kingdom of 
God. The world as such is not divine, but a procession which, 
includes its return to the Divine. That is, the First Principle 
yields a rational and teleological basis and view of creation 
and its history. The final cause is the true first cause. 

Creation in all its present forms and in its totality is imper- 
fect. Respice iinem is philosophy's antidote to doubt, awak- 
ened by imperfect and transitory forms of life and creed. 
Reason is immanent in and governs the world, but the world 
as it is, is not equal to, does not exhaust Reason — the Totality. 
'^Anthropo-cosmic theism" is the valid interpretation of the 
creation, still creation is not exhaustive of the Divine. It con- 
tains all degrees of tmreason as well as of reason. It is not, 
even as a totality, the perfect, but a process towards the per- 
fect. Nothing ultimate or infallible can be looked for in this 
temporal process, nor, on the other hand, can it be looked at 
apart from its ultimate and essential destiny. There may be 
three false verdicts as to creation : all things are divine ; noth- 
ing is divine; some things are divine. The last has been the 
contention of abstract supernaturalists. They pervert the 
Church doctrine of the God-man, into an assertion that the 
man Jesus, in his state of humiliation (kenosis), was only 



298 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

veiled Deity and deny that he "increased in wisdom and stat- 
ure" to his full-orbed Divinity at the Ascension. Much of the 
lately prevalent orthodoxy has run through the gamut of ex-» 
eluded heresies, especially those of Doketism and Monophys* 
itism. 

Again, it has applied its abstract canon to the Bible and the 
Church, seeking to take them out of the realm of the historic 
process ; thus going as wide of the mark as those who find no 
visible historical continuity in the Church, and no record of 
authoritative revelation in the Bible. 

Such abstract views are accountable for much of current 
scepticism. The state is jvtre divino. "There is no power 
(civil), but of God," yet Christians have long since ceased to 
stamp any one form as ultimate. The Church is jure divino, 
yet even with pulse-beat of historical continuity it can claim 
finality in no one form. The Church is never wholly holy, and 
never wholly whole or catholic. It is expanding into catholic- 
ity, growing up into the holiness of its Holy Spirit. So, too, 
of prophets, lawgivers, the moral sentiment of the community, 
the fixed laws of a social state — none of these are ever ultimate 
or infallible (ecclesiastical anathema, or civil proscription to 
the contrary), because they are only parts of a great process 
that is moving on, in, and through temporal, transitory forms ; 
returning them in enriched educated form whence they sprang. 
Nothing finite can be ultimate, nor can it be at all without be- 
ing in some way a member of the larger process towards the 
ultimate. 

Pantheism, which identifies the immediate actual forms of 
existence with the divine, is even more unphilosophical than 
the supernatural form of rationalism, which says that only 
some things are divine. This is, at least, semi-critical, while 
pantheism is wholly uncritical. 

Philosophy, however, differs from both of these in affirm- 
ing a progressive realization of rationality in the world-proc- 
ess. It claims to see enough of the process to have caught its 



ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 299 

whence and whither, and thus to have an instrument of criti- 
cism and a canon of valuation. Briefly stated it is this : the 
First Principle of the Universe is Personality, or thinking, 
loving will, going forth in a temporal process with the teleo- 
logical aim of returning with a whole commonwealth of souls 
educated into his own image. The First Principle is Reason, 
and the temporal process is toward Reason, each phase mani- 
festing some phase of rationality. The world of human his- 
tory manifests this rationality no less, nay more, than the world 
of natural history. History is neither an immediate work of 
God, nor is it an apostasy from God. It is a process from 
and to God, a process of the education of man into rationality, 
or into the concrete freedom of the Sons of God in his king- 
dom. On God's side it manifests his Providence; on man's 
side, it is humanity making itself, or coming to a practical con- 
sciousness of its rational freedom. Enough of this has been 
attained, to give us an estimate of the past and a forecast of 
the future. Man is what he now is, by virtue of those authori- 
tative beliefs and institutions, religious and political, which 
have held society together and educated it. Some of them 
have been very rudimentary teachings of that essential intel- 
ligence that constitutes the essence and the destiny of man. 
God ''hath determined the times before appointed," the organic 
epochs of peoples and eras, the ganglionic centres, which sum 
up and express the spirit, the rationality of various times and 
peoples. 

This of course implies an historical and psychological study 
of the origin and growth of all human institutions. But it 
also implies a philosophical or teleological estimate of all hu- 
man history. Our First Principle interprets it as the reason 
of humanity, organizing and instituting its needs and ideals 
in its onward stumbling to and fro between its own true char- 
acter and its passing caricature. History is thus interpreted 
as a series of intelligent events, a progressive education of the 
rationality of man in his institutions, in state, art and religion. 



300 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

Wherever two or three are met together to consult about and 
devise a common good ; and wherever this common good wid- 
ens in extent and deepens in quahty, there is seen the impHcit 
spirit of rationaHty, outering itself. 

As in nature nothing is without interest, significance, 
rationality to the student of science, so in human history, no 
creed, cult, or institution is without interest and significance. 
As the student of nature traces the increase of rationality from 
the lowest form of inorganic mattter up to its most organic 
form in man, so does the student of philosophy trace the in- 
crease of this rationality from the lowest form of ethical and 
religious life, up to its most organic, fulfilled form in the In- 
carnation and its extension in the life of the world. Up to 
the Christ, was the course of the world's history B. C. Up 
into Christ, has been its course through all the centuries A. D. 
In Christ was the perfect revelation of the character of the 
First Principle, the goal and the starting-point of all true hu- 
man history. Throughout the process this final cause domi- 
nates all empirical causes, using them only as plastic materials 
for its own self- formation. The merely historical method may 
easily invalidate any dogmatic theory of innate ideas and con- 
science, or any mechanically jure divino origin of human in- 
stitutions, but the philosophical method easily recovers them 
for the divine world-order. 

Man may be, historically, derived from the beasts, but he 
is, none the less, more than a beast ; more than the mere sum 
of antecedent empirical conditions of his genesis out of beasts 
or "out of the dust of the ground." Even science gives up 
the task of explaining the higher by the lower form, and phil- 
osophy finds in self-consciousness the ultimate explanation of 
nature. 

Nor, on the other hand, is the real value of the family, the 
State and the Church, to be found in their being traced back 
to some mysterious ab extra divine origin. Their value at any 
time consists in their adequacy to educate and express the 



ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY 301 

highest current and nascent forms of human well-being or con- 
crete freedom. This end is their real beginning. 'H 8c <^i;crts 
T€Ao5 ioTTL. Their phase of rationality is the measure of their 
worth, and the measure of temporal rationality is the idea of 
concrete corporate freedom of spirit in these institutions. 

The very faculty of knowledge which accomplishes the re- 
sults of scientific history implies, further, an eternal Self-Con- 
sciousness, eternally self-realized, and yet eternally realizing 
itself in temporal conditions. Nothing exists rationally ex- 
cept for self-consciousness, and all things only for an eternal 
Self-Consciousness. The theory of knowledge, then, is ulti- 
mate for man in his study and his estimation of all that is. 
The knowledge of all temporal conditions, can never itself be 
a part or product of these conditions, as they are only objects 
of this knowledge. It is to this spiritual principle, then, to 
which we must refer for parentage, all the institutions, usages, 
social codes and aspirations, through which man has become 
so far rationalized. The real at any time and place is the rela- 
tively rational for that time and place, but the end is not yet. 
The Mosaic economy for the Jews was one phase of this ration- 
ality. That of the Roman law was another phase, even for 
Christians. Even when Nero was its minister, St. Paul could 
tell Christians, ''There is no power but of God," and "he is*' 
the minister of God to thee for good." 

But this is far from identifying the actual at any time with 
the rational, the good. The concrete principle forbids the 
glorification of any status quo, and compels historical perspec- 
tive. It sees only a series of increasingly adequate manifesta- 
tions and vehicles of the true spirit of man. The highest form 
to-day is given for us in all the distinctively Christian institu- 
tions. Other objective forms of rationality are not now the 
^vVts of man. Other spirit of rationality can never be for 
man, however much its outward forms may change, as man is 
educated ''unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
the Christ" — the eternal Reason, the goal and the starting- 



302 THE FREEDOM OF AUTHORITY 

point of man's true history. This is the bed-rock, the bottom, 
the immanent formative and life-sustaining power in all the 
current phases of educative authority. Illustrative applica- 
tion of this ultimate bottom of all authority, may be made to 
current forms of social, civil and religious authorities, in and 
through v^hich man attains and exercises true freedom. 



APPENDIX 

Note i^ 

The other school of interpretation, which we have mentioned, is re- 
sponsible for this suspicion, which has cost us an appalling price, among 
other things the good-will of Protestantism and the opportunity to gain a 
friendly hearing for the wise and temperate proposals of the House of 
Bishops. In truth that party does not desire either of these. It is self- 
labeled Catholic. It holds the Episcopate in an unhistorical and sacer- 
dotal spirit. It obscures it by enveloping it with a certain theory of the 
apostolical succession, making it a necessary channel for the grace of 
valid ministry and sacraments.^ Churchmen of that party hold it in an 
unhistorical spirit, because they hold it in a form "locally adapted" not 
to the present living Christianity of this country, but to that of the 
middle ages, as the costume of a barbarian child might be "locally 
adapted" to the needs of a full-grown man of this generation and cul- 
ture. It looks upon Protestant Christianity as a failure or a chaos, as 
Carlyle's minnow in his little creek might upon the ocean-tides and 
periodic currents, and has but one short and easy recipe for its salvation 
— "Hear the Church." Too often this means only the Church in their 
own person, or parish, or party. 

It denies that the protesting, differentiating dialectic of the life of a 
Christian commonwealth is as much the work of the Holy Spirit as the 
conservative and synthetic element. It takes a part for the whole. It 
stands only for the arrested growth of the organization at an earlier 
period. But history is not a mere dead past. It is a living present in 

* Extract from appendix to author's Studies in He^eVs Philosophy of Religion, p. 325* 
^ Their theory or doctrine of apostolical succession is thus stated by Froude: 
** 1. The participation of the body and blood of Christ is essential to the maintenance of 
Christian life and hope in each individual. 2. It is conveyed to individual Christians only 
by the hands of the successors of the apostles and their delegates. The successors of 
the apostles are those who are descended in a direct line from them by the imposition 
of hands; and the delegates of these are the respective presbyters whom each has 
commissioned'* (quoted by Rev. John. J. McElhinney, The doctrine of the Church, 
p. 359). Again (from Tract No. LII); " In the judgment of the Church, the Eucharist, 
administered without apostolical commission, may, to pious minds, be a very edifying 
ceremony ; but it is not that blessed thing which our Saviour graciously meant it to be : 
it is not 'verily and indeed taking and receiving' the body and blood of him, our 
Incarnate Lord " {ibid.). 

303 



304 APPENDIX 

organic connection with a living past, that only becomes dead when 
locally unadopted. The same fact is held by both schools. But it is in- 
terpreted by the two with both a different historical and philosophical 
spirit. The one says the old must be transmuted into the new ; the other 
says that the new is bad and the old is good. The latter sacrifices the 
Kingdom of God to the Church as an end. To be a good churchman is 
more than to be a good Christian. They give it a sanctity above and 
apart from its intrinsic excellence as a means to the welfare of the whole 
estate of Christ's Church militant. So as to the value placed upon 
Church authority and holy orders. It calls "orders" a sacrament, though 
our article (XXV) denies it this grace. Without bishops no priest, 
without priest no sacraments, and so no salvation except in some way 
of irregular, unauthorized, uncovenanted Divine mercy. It travesties 
presbyter into priest^ and arrogates to itself the grandest title in God*s 
universe "Catholic." Fortunately for formal truth, it limits this by call- 
ing itself the Catholic party. It declines discussion, and deals in em- 
phatic assertion. Its devout thanks to the Lord for the unity of the 
Church are drowned by its constant litany and commination service for 
the one mortal sin of schism from a dead past. A few local directions 
given to local churches in the apostolical age are magnified into a whole 
book of Leviticus. St. Paul's "cloak" is translated "Eucharistic vest- 
ment," and his "parchments" "liturgy." Apist is developing into papist 
Miraculous powers, uninterrupted descent, infallible authority, fixed dog- 
mas, and ready anathemas — all are of Rome, Romish. 

As Archbishop Whately said : "It is curious to observe how common 
it is for any sect or party to assume a title indicative of the very excel- 
lence in which they are especially deficient, or strongly condemnatory 
of the very errors with which they are especially chargeable. The phrase 
'catholic' is most commonly in the mouths of those who are the most 
limited and exclusive in their views, and who seek to shut out the larg- 
est number of Christian communities from the gospel covenant. 
'Schism,' again, is by none more loudly reprobated than by those who 
are not only the immediate authors of schism, but the advocates of prin- 
ciples tending to generate and perpetuate schisms without end. And 
'Church principles' — 'High Church principles' — are the favorite terms of 
those who go the farthest in subverting all these" (The Kingdom of 
Christ Delineated, p. 125). There can be no more wicked form ©f 
schism than that which thus binds the oracles of God where he has not 
Himself bound them. And this theory is called that of organic unity, 
while It unfrocks the whole body of non-Episcopally ordained ministers, 
denying the validity of the orders and sacraments of those who have 
been foremost, under God's uncovenanted mercy, in spreading the prin- 



APPENDIX 305 

ciples and doctrines and spirit of Christ among men. Better call it the 
inorganic unity of petrifaction. Its spirit is really Donatistic, not 
churchly. Its Church history can all be put in one small volume, a port- 
able but pitiable commentary on the Saviour's promise and power of 
fulfillment. "History is heresy/' said a doctor of the Roman com- 
munion, which puts herself above history, or only takes out her own from 
the great current. To it Christ has been defeated by anti-Christ. Cer- 
tain it is that, the great mass of American Christians will respond to 
either Roman or Anglo-Roman assertion that "history is heresy" in the 
words of St. Paul : "After the way they call heresy, so worship I the 
God of my fathers" (Acts xxiv, 14). The Romish interpretation given 
to the Church by this party can never be accepted by American Chris- 
tianity. For it ignores all the fine spiritual life and thought of the 
Protestant centuries, the outcome of the deepest mental and spiritual 
struggles and life of any age of Christendom. It is reactionary, not 
progressive — hierarchical, not democratic — ^priestly rather than propheti- 
cal and ethical. It aims at once more subjecting the consciences of the 
laity to the direction of priests through the confessional, practically mak- 
ing it obligatory for confirmation and the Holy Communion. It imitates 
the Roman costume and cult and dialect, often out-Romaning the Ro- 
mans. It is a party, rather than a school of thought, bent upon propa- 
gating and proselytizing. It is instant in season and out of season in 
circulating its little reasons for being a churchman of its type. It has its 
index librorum prohibitorum. With impudent assumption it puts the 
Church's imprimatur upon its pseudo-Catholic tracts, manuals, and books 
of devotion and of doctrine. Its peculiar horror is sectarianism, and its 
chief mortal sin is schism. Protestantism is "the man of sin." Shame 
alone forbids me giving the name of the bishop who could write thus: 
"The question with tfie "Protestant is not so much what you aMrm, but what 
do you deny; and the more he denies and the less he affirms, the better 
Protestant is he. He is not expected to give much heed to the Lord's 
Prayer or the Ten Commandments, and for the most part he does not 
disappoint the expectation." It is but a sorry eirenicon that this party 
can attempt with the great rich current of American Christianity. If the 
offer of the historic Episcopate in their interpretation of its significance 
could be accepted, it would only lead to an American Church that would 
need to repent in sackcloth and ashes for its spiritual apostasy from 
Christ, and pray to be speedily baptized with the fiery baptism of a 
Reformation. 

Certainly a polemical protest against the interpretation of the historic 
Episcopate by this very polemical party, is essential to our holding it 

20 



3o6 APPENDIX 

forth as an eirenicon to our brethren of the great Christian communions 
of America. This protest is necessary, because this party, though small, 
is very noisily aggressive. It is the polemical party in the Church, 
loudly and constantly protestant against the Protestantism of its own 
communion. It thus greatly misrepresents us to others. For, measured 
by the number and dogmatism of its words, it might well be considered 
as representing the dominant view of our Church. In the interest of in- 
ternal peace, the greatest possible latitude has been allowed to this party. 
It has been protected in its youth, but, as it gains strength, it turns again 
only to rend those who have protected it, and seeks to make its liberty 
the tyranny of the whole Church. ... In its beginning, this party sprang 
from a real revival of religion. It had then, and has always had, its 
devout scholars, saintly men, and genuine philanthropists. It has done 
much for our own Church in infusing a reverent devotion into 
worship, and has done a noble work of Christian love among the poor. 
But this does not commend the system. The same lofty praise due to 
many of them is also justly accorded to very many of the Jesuits. For its 
many holy men and their self-sacrificing labors of love, I have all honor 
and thankfulness. For much that they have done to adorn "the Bride of 
Christ," for the "gold, silver, and precious stones" they have built upon 
the one foundation, I have due appreciation. But for the theory, and for 
many of its practical as well as logical results — for its *'wood, hay, and 
stubble" — I have only sorrow and shame. 

This retrogressive party is not a large one. While many of its ex- 
ponents are too devout and holy to put it forth in the obnoxious form 
described, it is yet as a party extremely pronounced and polemical in its 
assertion of the sacerdotal character of the ministry. It is a clerical 
party. It embraces a few laymen. Neither can it be said that the other 
school of thought is dominant in the Church, just in the form described. 
The conservative High Churchmen, perhaps, form the bulk of our com- 
munion. These hold to episcopacy as essential to the very being of a 
visible Church, without giving it the obnoxious sacerdotal interpretation. 
For the most part, they also hold it in the true historical spirit described. 

The attempt by the sacerdotal party to capture this large element 
wholesale bade fair of success but recently. It has failed and will fail. 
For that school stands firmly loyal to the historical Reformation of the 
Church of England. Its wider perspective, its larger practical wisdom 
and sympathy with the work of the Spirit in the modern world, will pre- 
vent its members accepting mediaeval sacerdotalism as essentially con- 
nected with their view of the Episcopate. It is freedom from this that 
makes them at one with the Evangelical and Broad Church schools in 
their desire "to enter into friendly conference with all or any Christian 



APPENDIX 307 

bodks seeking the organic unity of the Church." It is the sacerdotal 
system connected with the mediaeval theory of the Episcopate as the 
necessary channel of divine grace, instead of the primitive and reforma- 
tion view of it as the best mode of government, that forms the line of 
radical demarkation between parties in our Church. Between these two 
there is as yet no tenable middle ground. The former is not, and the 
latter is. Primitive, Reformed, Anglican and American. 

This question of our interpretation of the ^'historic Episcopate" is a 
most practical one. It is the question of the relation of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church to the other Protestant Churches of America. The 
historic fact may be interpreted into an unhistorical and unchristian 
theory ; or it may be so interpreted as to be the form for unifying in ex- 
ternal organization the large spiritual unity already existing between the 
different churches of this country. It may be interpreted so as to lead 
us to stretch out our hands to the wwholy Orthodox Greek Church, that 
scarcely awakes sufficiently from its torpid slumber to recognize our 
infantile presence; or to beckon to Rome — to the great, wily, compre- 
hensive, absolute master of this theory — as Mohammed beckoned to the 
mountain. Or it may be interpreted so broadly, reasonably, practically, 
and philosophically in the Spirit of Christ and of the historic method, 
that we shall not stretch out our hands in vain to our sister churches of 
America. No age and no form of ecclesiastical institution are perfect or 
lasting, and yet the Holy Spirit is the diversifying and unifying principle 
of them all. Holding fast in the spirit of the historico-philosophical and 
practical method, all that is true in the past in vital connection with all 
that is good in the present, we need no arrogant pretension of absorbing 
all into an Anglican Church with its fully developed polity and liturgical 
worship, in order to be the leader of broken American Christendom into 
the higher catholicity of the American Church of the future. 

The vision of and the sure confidence in the One Holy Catholic 
Church as realized, or as being realized, through historic process under 
Divine guidance, has come to all devout disciples of the One Lord. But, 
under this guidance, the practical step to be taken by us to-day is toward 
an autonomous national Church. It is the ecclesiastical problem of the 
country. It is a longing of every Christian heart. 

Note 2 

In insisting upon grace and rhythm and harmony as characteristic of 
the well trained mind Plato says : 

*'This being the case ought we to compel only our poets to impress on 
their productions the likeness of a good moral character? Or ought we 
not to extend our superintendence to the professors of every other craft, 



308 APPENDIX 

and forbid them to impress those signs of an evil nature, of dissoluteness, 
of meanness and of ungracefulness, either on the likenesses of living 
creatures or on buildings, or on any other work of their hands? Should 
we not interdict all who cannot do otherwise from working in our city, 
so that our guardians may not be reared amongst images of vice, as upon 
unwholesome pastures, culling much every day, little by little from many 
places, until they insensibly get a large mass of evil in their inmost souls? 
Ought we not then, rather, seek out artists of another stamp, who by the 
power of their genius can trace out the nature of the beautiful and the 
graceful, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a healthful region, 
may drink in good from all their surroundings, whence any emanation 
from noble works may strike upon their eye or ear, like a gale wafting 
health from salubrious lands, and thus win them, imperceptibly, from 
their earliest childhood into resemblance, love and harmony with the 
true beauty of reason."^ 

Again noting the care of dyers to get the true sea-purple and make it 
indelible, he says : "You may see from this illustration what we mean 
by giving our guardians the best education in music and gymnastic. 
Imagine that we were only contriving how they might best be influenced 
to take as it were the color of the laws, in order that their opinion on all 
subjects might be indelible, owing to their congenial nature and appro- 
priate education, and that their color might not be washed out by such 
terribly efficacious detergents as pleasure and pain and fear and desire, 
which are more potent to bleach, than any nitre or lye or any other 
solvent in the world."^ 

Note 3 

"I believe," says Comte, "that I have discovered the law of develop- 
ment exhibited by the human intelligence in its diverse spheres of 

activity The law is this : that each of our main conceptions, each 

branch of knowledge, passes in succession through three distinct stages — 
the theological or imaginative stage, the metaphysical or abstract, and the 

scientific or positive In the theological stage, the human mind 

seeks to discover the inner nature of things, the first and final cause of 
all the effects which strike the senses: in short it aims at absolute 
knowledge, and regards phenomena as due to the direct and continuous 
activity of supernatural beings, more or less numerous, whose arbitrary 
intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the Universe. 

"In the metaphysical stage, which is at bottom merely a modification 
of the theological, for supernatural agents there are substituted abstract 

* The Rtpublic, Bk. Ill, 401. B. 
^Ibid., Bk. IV. 429-430. 



APPENDIX 309 

forces, entities or personified abstractions, supposed to be inherent in dif- 
ferent classes of things, and to be capable of producing by themselves, all 
the phenomena we observe. The mode of explanation at this stage, 
therefore, consists in assigning for each class a correspondent entity. 

^'Lastly in the positive stage, the human mind, recognizing the impos- 
sibility of gaining absolute conceptions of things, gives up the search 
after the origin and destiny of the Universe and the inner causes of 
phenomena, and limits itself to the task of finding out, by means of expe- 
rience, combined with reflection and observation, the laws of phenomena, 
i. e., their invariable relations of similarity and succession. The explana- 
tion of facts, reduced to its simplest terms, is now regarded as simply the 
connection which subsists between diverse particular phenomena and 
certain general facts, the number of which is continually reduced with the 
progress of science. 

"The theological reaches its greatest perfection when it substitutes 
the providential action of a single being for the numerous independent 
divinities imagined to be at work in primitive times. Similarly, the high- 
est point reached by the metaphysical system consists in conceiving, 
instead of a number of particular entities, a single great entity, called 
Nature, which is viewed as the sole source of all phenomena. So also the 
perfection of the positive system, a perfection towards which it con- 
tinually tends, but which it is highly probable it will never quite reach, 
would consist in being able to represent all observed phenomena, as par- 
ticular instances of a single general fact, such as the fact of gravitation. 

"We thus see that the essential character of positive philosophy is to 

regard all phenomena as subject to invariable laws What is called 

causes — whether these are first or final causes — are absolutely inacces- 
sible and the search for them a vain one What attraction and 

weight are in themselves, we cannot possibly tell." 

Note 4 

"A Candid Examination of Theism'' by Physicus. (Geo. Romanes, 
1878), written when the author's thought was dominated by the cate- 
gories of mechanical physics. 

The legend prefixed is: "Cans't thou by searching find out God?" 
The answer, obtained by an examination of the arguments for the 
existence of God from the standpoint of physical science is, No. The 
last paragraph of his examination of their proofs should I think be read 
by everyone in this day of the dominance — half understood by most of 
those who accept it — of the merely scientific view of the universe. 

Regarding the negative conclusion reached. Prof. Romanes says : 

"It is therefore with the utmost sorrow that I find myself compelled 



3IO APPENDIX 

to accept the conclusions here worked out." Then premising the possibly 
disastrous tendency of his work, he adds : "So far as I am individually 
concerned .... it becomes my duty to stifle all belief of the kind which 
I conceive to be the noblest and to discipline my intellect with regard to 
this matter into an attitude of purest scepticism. And forasmuch as I am 
far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doc* 
trine of he "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendor of 
"the old," I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of 
God, the Universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness ; and although from 
henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless but gain 
an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words 
"the night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times I think, 
as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed 
glory of that creed which once was mine and the lonely mystery of ex- 
istence as now I find it — at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to 
avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible For whether 
it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the re- 
quirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those hal- 
lowed associations which to me, at least, were the sweetest that life has 
given, I cannot but feel that for me and for others who think as I do, 
there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton — Philosophy having 
become a mediation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept 
know thyself has become transformed into the terrific oracle of Oedipus — 
"Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art." 

Reference should, however, be made to a posthumous A^olume of 
Romanes,^ in which Romanes gives the processes of his ripening expe- 
rience that led him back to the Christian faith. One of the chapters is 
entitled, "A Candid Examination of Religion," by Metaphysicus, as his 
earlier volume had been ^'A Candid Examination of Theism/' by 
Physicus. He is still Physicus — a devoted student of physical science, 
accepting fully the mechanical theory and its results, yet he sees the limi- 
tations of the merely scientific world view forcing him from physics to 
metaphysics for a satisfactory world view. The volume is the candid 
personal confession of the way leading Physicus from the despair with 
which closed his first volume. 

Bishop Gore at the close of the volume says : 

"Georges Romanes came to recognize, as in these written notes so also 
in conversation, that it was 'reasonable to be a Christian believer' even 
before the activity or habit of faith had been recovered. His life was cut 
short very soon after this point was reached ; but it will surprise no one 
to learn that the writer of these 'Thoughts' returned, before his death, 

* Thoughts on Religion. Edited by the Rt. Rev. Charles Gore. 



APPENDIX 311 

to that full, deliberate communion with the Church of Jesus Christ, which 
he had for so many years been conscientiously compelled to forego. In 
his case, 'the pure in heart' was, after a long period of darkness allowed, 
in a measure before his death, to 'see God.' " 

Fecisti nos ad te, Domine; et inquietum est cor nostrum donee 
requiescat in te. 

Note 5 

Pragmatism has lately been proclaimed as a new method in 
Philosophy. It is a revolt against the intellectual interpretation of expe- 
rience given by the Catholic philosophy of the ages in favor of a practical 
interpretation. It seems to be but an extension of the worth-judgments 
(Werturteile) of the Ritschlians to the field of all knowledge. Or 
we might put it that it is the bodily subsumption of the whole principles 
of knowing or existential judgments of Kant's First Critique, under the 
heuristic principles of his Third Critique and of his moral judgment of 
the Second Critique. It only carries the agnosticism of those who deny 
the possibility of knowledge of non-sensuous experience to the full swing 
of the circle and denies it in to to. Or rather, as it claims to be a certain 
sort of knowledge ; it maintains that all our knowledge consists of prac- 
tical teleological judgments, whether in mathematics and physics or ir?. 
morality and religion. Indeed it seems that the same moral dread of 
positive science, as subversive of the individual and his spiritual posses- 
sions, inspires the pragmatists that lead to RitschFs use of Werturteile. 
This is notably so in the case of Professor Howison.^ It is equally so in 
Professor James' volume.^ In Professor F. C. S. Schiller's volume,^ 
the animus, seems to be a revolt against the regnant Idealism developed 
from the Kantian standpoint. In the volume of essays, by eight Oxford 
men,* the religious and moral interests seem to be at the bottom of their, 
contention against the intellectualism of both science and philosophy. In 
the volume of Professor Dewey^ pragmatism is used rather as a method 
of studying the genetic process of intellectual judgments, than as wholly 
new method in Philosophy. What now is the fundamental principle of 
this extravagantly vaunted new theory that is styled pragmatism? As 
one reads most of these volumes, he becomes dazed and bewildered and 
ends with very vague ideas of what the thing really means. Two things 
however are clear. First these pragmatists give us to understand that 
truth as an objective system — truth, the search for which has been the 

* The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays, igoi. 

^ The Will to Believe and Other Essays. 

^ Humanism, Philosophical Essays, rgoa. 

^ Personal Idealism. 

^ Studies in Logical Theory ^ by John Dewey and others. 



312 APPENDIX 

object of all science and philosopsy, is a mere cob-web of the intellect. 
Second, that all our judgments of reality are worth or value-judgments. 
What is called truth and reality consist in bare practical effects. In 
science, for instance, if it serves our practical purposes better to use the 
Ptolomaic instead of the Copernican theory in astronomy then it is the 
true and real for us. In morals, if honesty is the best policy, then hon- 
esty is the truth. In philosophy, if we can get more out of our moral 
and religious life by believing in polytheism instead of monotheism, then 
polytheism is the truth, which is practically the view of Professor How- 
ison and Professor James and Professor Schiller. Any affirmed truth 
that does not subserve practice is no truth. The modicum of truth in this 
last statement is however perverted, by an illogical conversion of prem- 
ises, into the statement which is the main working view of pragmatism, 
that only what is practical is true. The corollary follows, let us test all 
affirmed truths by their cash value. What is the practical cash value to 
us of any supposed truth in science as well as in philosophy and religion ? 
Mental arithmetic becomes at best a moral arithmetic. The cui bono 
scales are to give us the validity of judgments in all spheres. Reason- 
ableness or truth is not a good in itself. It is an abstraction. The only 
truth is goodness, i, e., that which is good for some practical purpose. 
There is no truth, no absolute system of truth independent of the needs of 
men. Love of such supposed truth, which has always been the inspira- 
tion of thinkers, is rudely taken from us as the worship of a false God. 
Such truth is useless, and the useless is the false. There is no determi- 
nate nature of reality, either physical, for science or metaphysical, for 
philosophy. True truth is the judgment that works, accomplishes some- 
thing beneficent for man. A mathematician who discovered a new 
formula and said that while it was absolutely demonstrable, the best 
thing about it was that it could never by any possibility be of any use to 
anybody. The pragmatist would say that he and all intellectualists were 
excrescences on real humanity. Logic, too, of course, is dismissed in 
favor of working theories that produce what meets men's needs. 

We can say that what is true in pragmatism is not new, and what is 
new in it — ^the attempt to substitute value-judgments in all cognition for 
judgments of truth and reality — is not true. 

Note 6 

This letter of the Archbishop of Paris, founded upon a communication 
from the Pope, that the supreme tribunal of the holy office had formally 
condemned the works of the Abbe Loisy, thus concludes : 

" Considering, first, that it has been published without the im- 
primatur demanded by the laws of the Church; 



APPENDIX 313 

"Second, that it is of such a nature as to seriously trouble the faith of 
the faithful upon the fundamental dogmas of the Catholic teaching, not- 
ably concerning the authority of the Scripture and of tradition, the 
Divinity of Christ and His infallible knowledge, the redemption accom- 
plished by His death, the doctrines of the resurrection, the Eucharist and 
the divine institution of the sovereign pontificate and episcopate ; 

"We reprobate the book and interdict the reading of it by the clergy 
and the faithful of our diocese. 

"Paris, January 17, 1903 

**FRANgois Cardinal Richard, 

'* Archbishop of Paris.'' 

The Archbishop of Nancy in writing of the method of Abbe Loisy 
says that it is neither Catholic, nor Christian, nor historical, nor critical, 
nor theological, nor scientific, nor loyal. 

Note 7 

"The masters of those who know," in both philosophy and science, 
fully recognize the limitations of their work, and also recognize the mass 
of rather worthless stuff that ofttimes parades itself under the guise of 
philosophy or of science. 

For a frank statement to this effect from masters in science I refer 
to the Method for Promoting Research in the Exact Sciences, published 
in the Year Book of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1904. It 
contains letters from six distinguished men of science in reply to a letter 
of Professor Simon Newcomh, soliciting opinions as to the best method 
of promoting the work of the Carnegie Institution in Research Work. 
Dr. Newcomb's letter itself is admirable. I give only a quotation from 
the letter of Karl Pearson, of the University College, London, England : 

"i. I agree absolutely with Professor Newcomb's first statement 
that the nineteenth century has industriously piled together a vast mass 
of astronomical, physical, and biological data, and that very little use has 
hitherto been made of this material. The reason for this I take to be 
that a man of mediocre ability can observe and collect facts, but it takes 
the exceptional man of great logical power and control of method to 
draw legitimate conclusions from them. 

"2. Differing probably from Professor Newcomb, I hold that at 
least 50 per cent, of the observations made and the data collected are 
worthless, and no man, however able, could deduce any result from them 
at all. In engineer's language, we need to "scrap'' about 50 per cent, of 
the products of nineteenth century science. The scientific journals teem 



314 APPENDIX 

with papers that are of no real value at all. They record observations 
which cannot be made of service by any one, however able, because they 
have not been undertaken with a due regard to the safeguards which a 
man takes who makes observations with the view of testing a theory of 
his own. In other cases the collector or observer is hopelessly ignorant 
of the conditions under which alone accurate work can be done. He 
'piles up' observations and data because he sees other men doing it and 
because that is supposed to be scientific work." 



INDEX 



Absolute personality, 216. 

Actuality, 89, 141; actualities treated by 
historians, 88. 

A. D. and B. C, 300. 

Age: the unhistorical, 19; of criti- 
cism, 289. 

Alter ego, 33. 

L*ainericanisme, 107. 

Analysis of one*s individuality, 23. 

Ancients: we are the, 239. 

Anthropologists, 204. 

Antinomies, 5. 

Apologetics: Preface, 252; are sec- 
ondary, 154. 

Apostles' Creed, 12, 126; of Saba- 

tier, Harnack and Loisy, 126. 

**Apostles of circumstance," 162. 

Aristotle: i, 7, 25, 33, 45, 181, 195, 199; 

's theory of development, 181; 

's theology, 188. 

"Ascensio mentis ad Deum," 294. 

Aufhebettt 18. 

Aurelius, Marcus, 23. 

Authority: 4, 7, 28, 32, 131; definition 

of , 6; a pedagogue, 7; one 

supreme personal , 7. 

Autonomy, 34. 

"Back to Jesus," 65, 85; "Back to 

Kant," S2; *'Back to the Fathers," 

227, 
Bacon, 180. 
Bad metaphysic: of some men of 

science, 20. 
Bain, 174. 
Believe: / believe rests upon a we 

believe, 288. 
Bible, the: 59, 268, 280; critics of the 

, 74. 

, the **paper Pope," 12. 

Birthplace, 24. 

Boehme, Jacob Mystic, 296. 

Bossuet, 44. 



Biichner, 175, 
Buckle, 162. 
Buridan's ass, 32, 

Cabanis, 175, 

Caesar, 't^aut aut nullus," 102. 

Calvin, John, 36, 140. 

Caprice, liberty of, 33. 

Catechetical period, the, 267. 

"Catholic faith, the," 261; why do I be- 
lieve ? 262. 

Catholic party, the, 304 (Appendix). 

Catholic philosophy, 155. 

Catholicism, Roman: Harnack's view 
of, 71; Sabatier's view of, 47 ff. 

Catholics, system of, 59, 60; liberal 
, 107. 

Causality, the category of , 170. 

Certitude, 253, 2^6. 

Character: 33; relatively char- 
acterized, 34. 

Chinese, morality of, 37; education 
of, 38. 

Choice, element of, 28. 

Christ, divinity of, 18; the eternal 
Losos and the historical Christ, 105; 

the personality of , 241 ; many 

portraits of , 246. 

Christian History, Philosophy of, 196. 

Christian Mystics, 139. 

Christendom, a reunited , 136. 

Christianity: historical transformations 
of, 49; what is ? a belated in- 
quiry, 58, 91; in its primitive 

form, 80, 84; primitive and modern 
, the bond of union, 107; New- 
man's idea of the development of 

, 108; and the conception 

of development, 80; of Sabatier 

and Harnack, 75; historical , 81, 100; 

its own interpretation, 95, 

Christians, liberal, 13. 



315 



3i6 



INDEX 



Church, the: militant and 

triumphant, 93; the growth of , 

114; a teacher, 128; as an 

objective historical fact, 220; the au- 
thority of , 129; Catholic creeds 

of .held in common by both Roman- 
ists and Protestants, 144; the Roman, 

147; as the "terrestial God" jure 

divino, 139; the Roman Catholic , 

139; is actual Christianity, 141. 

Christological development, 125. 

Comic philosophy, 85. 

Commandment, the fifth , 132. 

Comprehension, 265. 

Compulsory morality, as distinglished 
from physical, mechanical compulsion, 
35. 

Comte, 152, 159, Appendix, Note VI. 

Conception, 265. 

Confession: a personal, 137; personal 

of Sabatier, so. 

"Confessions of faith," history of , 

246. 

Conformist, i, 46. 

Conformity, 6, 28. 

Conscience: 34; of a good man 

has a history, 34. 

Consciousness, specifically religious, 44. 

Conservatism, 37, 151. 

Conviction, personal, 12, 28. 

Crab cry, 79. 

Creed: and doctrine, 142, 144; the 

oecumenical , 241, 247; a law 

of liberty, 279; creedal claims. loi; 
creeds have a history, 23s; credo, 
261. 

Criticism, the function of, 249; age of 
, 289. 

Cult, 43, 116, 142, 145. 



Darwin, 179. 

Degenerates, 3. 

Deluge, 16. 

Development: 178, 184, 198; i; 

self-development, 141; a^;o4-^+i^», 

theory of , 181. 

Dialectic, 38. 

Dicey, Professor, 203. 

Dissent, 12. 

Divinity of Christ, 18. 

Duties, 25. 



is 
Aristotle's 



Easter message and Easter faith, 68. in. 

Ecclesiasticism, 218; critical , 219. 

Eclaircissement, 10. 

Education, 7; Greek ideal of , 8. 

Emerson, i, 2, 244. 

Empirical school, vice of, 158. 

Empiricism, challenged, 214. 

End: chief of man, 31, 152, 153; 

chief of the race, 81. 

Episcopate, 303 (Appendix). 

Erdmann, 29 (footnote). 

Esoteric Buddhism, 86. 

Essence, a category of relativity, 88. 

Ethical organisms, 25. 

Eucharist, the, 146. 

Evolution: 166, 176; mechanical , 

177, 185; limits of , 189; miracle 

of , 206. 



Faith, 6s, 257. 

Faribault example, 226, 

Feuerbach, 120. 

Fifth Commandment, the, 132. 

Final cause, 79. 

Finality, as lack of virility, 37. 

Freedom: 27, 28,; eighteenth century 
form of , 12; elements of con- 
crete , 28; etymological sense 

of , 30; in bonds, not from 

bonds, 33. 

Friends, the Society of, 227. 



Genesis, of the good man, 29. 

Genus, real, 20. 

Gibbons, Archbishop, 149. 

Giddings: 164. 

*'Go to the ape, thou man,'* and "go to 

the man, thou beast," 203. 
God, as nature, 260. 
God, kingdom of, 28, 67, 68, iii. 

God's child: everybody is , 35. 

God's service, various forms of, 45. 
Goethe, 11. 

Golden age, the, a fiction, 202. 

Golden past, the, 210. 

Gospel, the, miraculous element of, 78. 

Greek fathers, 81. 

Greek philosophy, 106. 

Ground vs. Grounds, 254, 290. 



INDEX 



317 



ITabituation, 9. 

Harnack: 56, 57^ 66, 85, 90, 107, 125, 

144; thesis of 70; *s view of 

Roman Catholicism, 71. 

Hatch, Edwin, Professor, 209. 

Hecker, Father, 149. 

Hedge, Doctor, 148, 

Hegel, 18, 45, 211. 

Hell, 36. 

"Helping idea," 66, 

Heteronomy, 34. 

Higher by lower, error of explaining, 
21. 

Historical Christianity, 100. 

Historical method: 97, 161; defined, 
158; limitations of, 193; the philo- 
sophical form of, 197. 

History: 161; rationality of, 17; Chris- 
tian , philosophy of, 96; science 

of , 163. 

Hobbes, 21. 

Holmes, Dr. O. W., 234. 

Holy Communion, 43, 146. 

Hooker, 140, 143. 

Howison, Professor G. H., 10. 

Hume, 77. 

Huxley, on Hume on miracles, 77. 

Impedimenta: 218; two classes of , 

230. 

Incarnation: 259; doctrine of , 106; 

of the Divine Logos, 99. 

Indifferent things, 30. 

Individual: 3, 19; as an inde- 
pendent atom, 10; right of private 
judgment of the , 12; unique- 
ness of the , 23; freedom and 

rights of the , 27. 

Individualism, abstract, 213. 

Individuality: 4; uniqueness of , 

22; analysis of one's , 23. 

Infallibility, no absolute , 127. 

Institutional churches, 145. 

Institutions, 7. 

Ireland, Archbishop, 149. 

James, 10. 

Jesus: authority of dismissed by 

Sabatier, 61; the historical and 

Ritschlians, 64; "Back to ," the 

cry of Ritschlians, 65, 85, 93; per- 
sonal religion of , 80, 92; neces- 



sity of tlic interpretation of 87; 

resurrection of , iii. 

Jesusolatry: 61; Harnack on , 67. 

Judgment, private, 4. 

Jure divino: the state is , 139; 

theory of , 216. 

Jurisprudence, 165, 204. 

Kant: 28 (footnote), 104, 162, 175; 

dualism of , 54; "Back to ," 

82. 
Kantian agnosticism, 56. 
Keane, Archbishop, 149. 
Kedney, Rev. Dr. J. Steinfort, 296 

(footnote). 
Kingdom of God, 28, 67, 68, iii. 

La Mettrie, 175. 

Laplace, 5. 

Leibnitz, 10. 

Liberal Christians, 13. 

Libertas arbitrii, 32. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 191. 

Logos: 132, 135; Harnack on, 70. 

Loisy: 47, 49, 108; vs. Sabatier, 

49; 's "The Gospel and the 

Church," condemned, 122; on 

Romanism and Protestantism, 128; 

ecclesiastical condemnation of , 

312 (Appendix). 

Lux Mundi, 135. 

Mach, Ernst, 171 (footnote), 177. 

Man: chief end of , 31, 152, 153; 

evolution of , 38. 

"Mechanical view" of the universe, 
Preface, 172. 

Men, free and equal by nature? 31. 

Messiah, the, 125. 

Metaphysic: bad, 20; of scientific men, 
190. 

Metaphysical stage, 160; metaphysical 
theories of exponents of science, 167; 
metaphysical science, 174. 

Milton, 28. 

Miracles of the Old Testament, no. 

Miraculous element, given up by Har- 
nack and others, 76; of the Gos- 
pel, 78. 

Modern science and culture as empir- 
ical as religion, 153. 

Moral organisms, 20. 



3i8 



INDEX 



Morality: compulsory, 35; standpoint 
transcended, 35, 39; conventional 
, educative of the form of con- 
science, 36; limitations of conven- 
tional , 36; without religion, 

42; transformed and fulfilled by 

religion, 43. 

Morals, conventional, relativity of, 39. 

Mother-tongue 25. 

Mythology scientific, 184. 

Neo-Kantianer, 104. 

Neo-Kantians, 65. 

Newman: 238; 's idea of the de- 
velopment of Christianity, 108; 
's tests, 109. 

Nicea, council of, 113; the Nicene creed, 
247, 278. 

Non-conformists: i; of England, 3. 

Non-conformity, dialectic of: 39; , 

function of, 16, 17. 

Non-personal, always sub-personal, 258. 

O'Connell, Rt. Rev. Mgr., 149. 

Organisms: 195, 196; , moral, 20; 

, ethical, 25. 

Orthodoxy: 145, 243; error of, 54. 
Overcome standpoints, 9. 

Pantheism: 298; impersonal , 178. 

Pathology, moral, 40. 

Pearson, 171 (footnote) ; Bishop Pear- 
son's definition of belief, 282. 

Pedagogy, 8, 26. 

Personal conviction, 12, 13. 

Persuasion, 35. 

Pessimistic mood, due to what? 212. 

Philosophy: 105, 173, 188, 292; Greek 

, 106; and its relation to 

religion, 91; Catholic , 155; prob- 
lem of , 173. 

Physicus, 103. 

Plato, 26, 27, 32, 307 (Appendix). 

Pluralistic view of the universe, 10. 

Plus, the element, 210. 

Policy and discipline, 142. 

Pope, the, 130; Pope Leo XIII, 131. 

Positivism, a twentieth century term, 
161. 

Positivists in sociology, 164. 

Potential, 185. 

Potentiality, 88. 



Pragmatism, 57, 

Prejudice, 4. 

Presbyterians, 137. 

Presence, real, 43. 

Private individual, 3. 

Private judgment: 4, 13; right of , 

5; of the individual, 12; as 

misjudgment, 4. 

Progress, 39. 

Protestantism: 12, 31, 133, 147; ethical 

might of , 14; Sabatier on , 

iiZ* S8; Loisy on , 128; mis- 
represented by Sabatier and Harnack, 
107. 

Protestant churches: on the continent, 
143; of America, 307 (Appendix); 

in Germany, 133; Catholicizing 

of the , 134. 

Protestant Episcopal church, 144. 
Protestants: 13, 14, 54; fundamental 

doctrines of , 13. 

Purgatorio, 36. 

Quakers, 137. 

Rationalism, 10. 

Rationality: 237; of history, 17. 

Reflection, 265. 
Revelation, 256. 
Rights, 25. 
Real presence, 43. 

Reality, degrees of , 141. 

Reason: 36; age of , 12; abstract 

, 14. 

Reformers, 37. 

Reformation, the, 6, 59. 

Relative truth of the twentieth century, 

209. 
Relativity: 207; of the relative, 

210. 
Religion: 40, 41, 100, 150, 152; and 

the state, 47 ; as willing, 283 ; of 

the spirit, 155; as feeling, 264; 

as knowing, 265; ideal of , 

41, 42; transforms and fulfills 

morality, 43; what is — < — ? 255; 

psychology of , 90; psychological 

forms of , 264; reconciliations of 

with science, 102. 

Religious certitude, 55. 
"Republic The" of Plato, 26. 
Restoration, a revolution, 37. 



INDEX 



319 



Resurrection of Jesus, iii. 
Reunion, with Rome, 14. 
Right of private judgment, 5. 
Ritschlian school; 56; principles of, 64; 

the historical Jesus and Ritschlians, 

64. 
Roman church, the, 147. 
Romanism and Protestantism: 136, 149, 

151; errors and evils of , 140; 

Loisy on , 128. 

Romanticism, 211. 

Rome: the church of the American 

party in , 149 ; the element, 283. 

Rousseau, 11, 15 (footnote). 

Sabatier: 47, 49, 85, 90, 107, 125; per- 
sonal confession of , 50; on 

Protestantism, 53; *s dismissal of 

the authority of Jesus as held by 
Catholics and Protestants, 61. 

Salvation Army, 238. 

Scepticism, 18. 

Schaff, Dr. 247. 

Schiller, 10, 25. 

Schism, 2(i. 

Schleiermacher, 51, 

Schools, scientific and philosophic, 167. 

Schopenhauer, 152. 

Science: 152, 167, 169, 170, 193, 213; 

problem of 167; , when 

bankrupt intellectually, 190; , 

when hopelessly bankrupt, 197; 

is anti-teleological, 201. 

Self, true, 33; self-estrangement, 9; 
self-consciousness, never subjective, 

257. 
Seth, Professor, 19. 
Sidgwick, 205, 207. 
Society, 21. 
Sophists, 32. 

Spalding, Archbishop, 149. 
Spencer, 21, 152, 162, 202, 204. 
St. Augustine, 34, 36. 



St Paul, 33, 36. 

Standpoints, overcome, 9. 

State, the: educational function of , 

46; is jure divino, 139; welfare 

of , 47; and religion, 47. 

Stoics, the cyclic theory of, 100. 

Suicide, 25. 

Summus ego, the, 29. 

Syllogism, a form of the Losos, formu- 
lated by Aristotle, 45. 

Taine, 163. 

Tarde, 22, 

Taylor, i8i. 

Teleological cause, 38. 

Teleology, 178. 

Theodicy, a, 217. 

Theonomy, 34. 

Thesis, the, of the volume: Preface. 

Tolstoi, 191. 

Trinity, doctrine of the holy , 297. 

Unhistorical age, the, 19. 

Unitarianism, 22T. 

Universe, pluralistic view of, 10. 

Von Hartmann, 83, 85, 152. 

Ward, 163. 

Warfare, between religion and an irre- 
ligious modern culture, 155. 

Westminster Catechism, 41. 
divines, 153. 

Whateley, Archbishop, 304 (Appendix). 

Will, formed, 33. 

"Yellow peril," 85. 

Zahm, Professor, 149. 
Zeitgeist: 73, 99; of modern cul- 
ture, 140. 
Zeno: 183; 's paradox, 157. 



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